Should you knock on your neighbours door?

The digital age has connected us to other people in ways we probably didn’t really think of 10 years ago.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress and many others play a constant role in our lives.

We are connected to people on the other side of the world in seconds, but quite often we don’t know the person next to us. Is this right?

We moved into our new offices in late August 2011, and thought it would be a good idea to celebrate with our customers as a way of saying thank you, after all who says no to a free drink and nibbles session when we can fit it in.

As we were organising the date, food and the wine someone said “shouldn’t we invite all our new neighbours? It is the polite thing to do, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely right” I said, “what better way to say hello than with a drink in our hands”

We then sat down and thought about how we would invite them, letter? email? phone call? – we couldn’t decide, and once again that single voice chirped “just knock on their door and hand them an invite, they are only over the road” BAM! The sky turned black, the thunder clapped, the lightning flashed and I am sure I heard the opening bars of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana reverberate around the room.

The response was swift, “Knock on their door? People don’t like door knockers anymore do they? We will get told to go away and fornicate because they are busy won’t we?”

“Surely they will understand once you explain” replied the brave chirper.

So we did it, we were met with a mixture of responses, lots of smiles from an existing customer and  from the lovely guys at thebluedoor, the rest of them were either suspicious, nervous, unsure and one was outright stunned that such an invite had been handed out. Oh well, at least everyone had an invite and knew that they were very welcome to pop over on the day.

The day arrived and we had apologies from our customer that poorly children would prevent their attendance, we partied with thebluedoor but sadly we didn’t meet a single one of our other neighbours.

Obviously there could be a whole range of reasons why, but I always think back to that warm September day and think, did we make the right approach?

I welcome your comments.