Every day, President Obama reads ten letters from the public in order to stay in tune with America’s issues and concerns. This clip reminded me of the importance of communicating, unmediated, with customers and employees to stay in touch with what’s really happening. Yes, OK, from the clip you can see that there is some mediation going on in how the letters are selected. But, what I mean is that if all the customer information you receive comes in the form of market reports and all the employee insight you have comes in the form of employee survey results, then you aren’t really in touch with what’s really happening. Because it’s only when your emotions and your feelings are engaged that you get real insight. And that comes from personal real stories, not from aggregated statistics.