“Perception is reality”

Once upon a time, a long time ago, a wise manager told me this in response to some whining from me. Things were happening, life was unfair, and I couldn’t understand why my wonderful contributions weren’t being appreciated.

“Perception is reality.”

The perception was wrong, and reality was irrelevant. Never mind whether I was doing a fantastic job — upper management didn’t see it that way, and their evaluations are based on their perception.

It seems that RoboHelp has a similar problem. Ellis Pratt writes on the Cherryleaf Technical Authors’ Blog: “The challenge for Adobe, I believe, is to develop a better product and to try and rebuild relationships that haven’t been nurtured properly for the past four or five years. Maybe it’s time they read ‘The Tipping Point’.”