Peeling Back the Veneer

Recently a friend introduced me to the expression “peeling back the veneer”. I love it, and think that it is an important communication concept.

When I was a kid, most furniture was “solid pine”, “solid walnut”, “solid maple”, or solid something. In other words, somebody had to cut down a tree, turn it into boards, and build some solid furniture. Not only was it built to last for centuries, but it celebrated the grain, the colour, the knots, and the very essence of the wood. It was as much art as science. Furniture was meant to be enjoyed for a lifetime, then passed on to the next generation.

But with “progress”, we learned to use low quality wood and to veneer it with a thin skin of pine, walnut, maple, or whatever suited the fashion of the day. On the surface it looked real, but structurally it often left much to be desired.

With even more “progress”, we learned to create furniture from plastic or pressboard and to disguise it with some indeterminate woody-looking vinyl, guaranteed to the original owner for at least three years.

Real wood furniture had this additional benefit: if you nicked it or gouged it, you could always refinish it to look as good as new, or at least to look “good with character”. But with veneer, not so much. Trust me, I’ve tried. All you can do is toss it in “recycle” and buy a new one– exactly what the manufacturer had in mind.

Life is much like that. We have become adept at covering everything with veneer. What you see is what I want you to see, and not very likely what you’re really going to get. And soon enough, you’re going to discover that my promise wasn’t intended to last as long as you had hoped.

Thus, the expression “peeling back the veneer” is an important one for communicators, whether speaking or listening.

Communication in our era is geared toward getting the buyer to click through, go to the shopping cart, satisfy the immediate need, and move on. You tell the customer just enough to intensify their lust, hustle them past those annoying “terms and conditions” and get them to click “OK”. Then you move on to the next one.

But in the real world we have spouses, kids, siblings, friends and colleagues. You can’t enforce “terms and conditions” on them. You can’t ask them to click “OK”, then disappear from our lives with no further thought.

Similarly, if you want to be durably successful as a professional or entrepreneur, you can’t hide behind flim-flam, “terms and conditions”, or an “OK” button either.

If you expect your colleagues, your family, the judiciary, your clients, or your customers to take your word as gospel, month after month and year after year, you need to demonstrate that you are made of solid stuff, through and through, and not something else, hidden behind veneer.

The same is true when you are the reader or the listener. In life, as in furniture, if you really want to know what’s going on, you need to “peel back the veneer”.

(With a tip of the hat to Marion Rivers.)