Business Communication - 2016

http://withoutbullshit.com/blog/interview-with-phil-simon-author-of-message-not-received/

Interview with Phil Simon who said:

We often think that we’re being clear at work when we’re not. This is why I titled the book Message Not Received. To quote George Bernard Shaw, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Thanks to far too much email and loads of jargon, business communication simply doesn’t work in many instances these days.

Radicati reports that the average worker today receives 120 to 150 emails per day. What’s more, that number is rising at 15 percent per year. That means by 2020, expect nearly 300 messages in your inbox each and every morning. I cite more stats in the book but to me there’s no question: We’re inundated with information.

Constant interruptions result in errors and generally inhibit our best work. We can’t reach what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls flow in his eponymous book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

I argue in the book that we would work better if we used less jargon and embraced truly collaborative tools. There are plenty of affordable alternatives to email; this isn’t 1998.

Simple-to-use, affordable as in FREE options existed in 2001, such as blog and wiki software. Those tools may have been "limited" and FREE, but they were SIMPLE to use, and they are still SIMPLE to use in 2016. They don't need a ton of complicated features.

... many people forget that the word communicate means “to make common.” Think about it. For their part, management consultants spew utter nonsense to attempt to justify their exorbitant rates.

others use jargon at work to try to fit in. They parrot the actions and words of those in senior positions. Finally, many people are afraid to call bullshit or at least raise their hands if they don’t understand a new term. Yes, language changes—and always will. Still, in an era of rampant technology, why not occasionally speak in plain English and not use some of the terms I describe next.

Email begets more email—not necessarily a solution to the problem. Plus, a great deal of valuable institutional knowledge lives in an inbox where no one else can find it. That makes no sense.

Man, I fought that battle 15 years ago, back in 2001. But our company chose to implement the Plumtree portal system. It was expensive, of course, but on the plus-side, the system allowed me to write plug-ins, using Active Server Pages. I choose Active State's Perl interpreter for Windows to write ASP programs that were "installed" and executed within Plumtree. My code could use the user access controls maintained by Plumtree.

But Plumtree required way too many steps to post a document. Hence the reason why I created blog and message board plug-ins for Plumtree. I wanted some simplicity. Since I wanted tools to operate as easy as sending an email, then I had to create them myself.

In the end, few people used Plumtree, probably because it was too different or complicated. I think users see these new things as a solution to a problem that does not exist. Users were fine with their cumbersome information flow processes because those functions were familiar.

And for the few people who used Plumtree, they uploaded MS Word and Acrobat PDF files, which I considered a failure. But that's because users emailed each other Word and PDF docs as way to collaborate. They used email as their knowledge management system. Hideous. And some of that continues today, amazingly.

In 2001, I installed the Greymatter blogging app on one of my servers at work. It was an easy-to-use blogging tool. Easy for that time. I produced static HTML files. No database required. I used the blog tool as my personal KMS, storing meeting notes, installs and updates, links to relative stories on the web, to-dos, etc. An internal, online, digital notebook or journal for my work day. That was back in 2001 and 2002.

Adopting collaborative tools such as Slack, HipChat, and Yammer just makes sense. We already use social networks so the “too-much-training” argument holds zero water. Most information ought to be accessible throughout an organization. Obvious exceptions include performance reviews, salary information, and other HR and personal data.

Email is an invaluable tool and I can’t imagine a world without it. In the book, I detail the reasons that it has become the default means of business communication.

If we want to communicate more effectively at work, then we need to stop relying on email.

I never bought the ridiculous claims made back around 2005 that email was dead. Email still works as a tool to send notifications and updates and to initiate conversations that may occur over the phone or in person.

Email should not be used as the collaboration tool. Email should not be used as a KMS.

#business - #kms - #email - #collaboration - #design - #wiki - #blogging