More on BlackBerry Etiquette

From Jeff Stahler, in the June 24 edition of the Columbus (OH) Dispatch:


Similarly, in an interview published in the Sunday New York Times (June 28), Daniel Amos, CEO of AFLAC, is quoted on the subject of his BlackBerry use:

Q. Are you a gadget person?

A. I didn’t think I would be. I didn’t get on BlackBerry until maybe two years ago. I’m so hooked on it I can’t stand it. If that red light goes on, I’ve got to know what’s going on.

Q. How do you break the habit?

A. You leave it at home if you’re going out to dinner or else get a divorce. I say that in jest, but really, I think you have to. I hate to leave it at home, but in our society, if the conversation lulls for a second — then let me see what’s happening in the world — I’m not sure it’s good for us.

By the way, apropos of employee communications, Amos makes an insightful comment:

"...make sure you motivate people because they ultimately are getting the job done for you. In business, you should treat your employees like they can vote. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get everybody to vote for you. But you kind of try to kiss the babies and shake the hands and tell ’em you appreciate ’em and would like them to support you."

Be Here Now

Imagine this scene. You’re deep in a conversation with a colleague in his office. You’re both totally focused on dealing with an issue, when suddenly someone barges in and interrupts, demanding your immediate attention.

Do you engage the interrupter, ignoring the person you were previously talking to? Of course not. That would be considered rude. In fact, most civilized people do not interrupt in that manner, unless it is to convey some urgent news, like there’s a bomb threat and you have to evacuate the building.

So why do we allow incoming emails on our BlackBerrys and iPhones interrupt what we are doing in the moment, particularly when that moment involves other people?

I remember a client meeting I once attended involving key personnel for the business unit’s monthly update. Participants represented all aspects of the operation.

The national sales manager walked in carrying his over-flowing in-box and placed a wastebasket next to his chair before sitting. He then proceeded to go through the entire in-box, disposing of this document or that, penciling notes on another, and so on throughout the meeting.

I was appalled by his rudeness, and further by the fact that the man running the meeting – his boss – allowed it to continue. But isn’t that the equivalent of people in a meeting, reading and sending emails on their PDAs? In my mind, there is no difference. The PDA is just more subtle than a hulking in-box.

Similarly, what do you make of a boss who postpones discussion of an urgent topic with you until he next sees you. And then, when you finally get to see him, he spends the entire meeting staring at his BlackBerry, scanning a series of messages and answering some of them? Is he more focused on you and the issue at hand, or the extraneous email that pops up on his BlackBerry? Will his response fully reflect the information you've given him? Not likely.

The title of this entry is borrowed from the 1971 book by the same name, Be Here Now, by Baba Ram Dass, née Richard Alpert, about his experience in Eastern religions and his discovery of the importance of being present in the moment. It’s a core truth not just for those seeking spiritual enlightenment but in business as well. It is the imperative of being here now, being present in the moment for yourself and, more importantly, for the people you work with.

If organizational communications are to be effective, everyone must engage completely, not half-way. Persistent use of PDAs when you should be engaging other people is, in my mind, half-way – perhaps less.

Some people brag about their ability to “multi-task.” I push back. You may think you’re able to do two or three things at once, but you are not doing them as well as you might if you were focused on just one of them. These same people insist that they can follow the thread of the meeting while on their BlackBerry. I doubt it. While they may glean the gist of what’s being said, they will miss the nuance and subtlety of the discussion.

And that’s to say nothing about the disrespect they show their colleagues as their attention focuses elsewhere.

The core subject of this blog is communications and how we can become better communicators, and use communications to be more effective businesspeople.

It is a continuing frustration for me as a communications consultant to have to deal with this on-going rudeness, not so much for the fact that I feel it is a sign of disrespect as it is an indication of someone’s inability to focus, to Be Here Now in the moment with me and other colleagues and fully participate in the issues at hand, engaging us and the topic completely.

A manager’s inability or lack of desire to control use of PDAs in meetings is a manager that likely has other issues impeding communications and, therefore, his/her ability to operate effectively as a manager.

I raise the issue because of a story earlier this week in the New York Times titled “Mind Your BlackBerry or Mind Your Manners” about the ubiquity of BlackBerrys, iPhones and the like in our modern business world and people’s propensity to focus on them at all times.

The article (thankfully) notes, “A spirited debate about etiquette has broken out. Traditionalists say the use of BlackBerrys and iPhones in meetings is as gauche as ordering out for pizza. Techno-evangelists insist that to ignore real-time text messages in a need-it-yesterday world is to invite peril.”

I side with the traditionalists. As this article adds, increasingly organizations and managers are demanding a “BlackBerrys off” policy for their meetings. Ford CEO Allan Mulally orders his direct reports to turn off their BlackBerrys for his weekly team meeting. And I'm sure he's not alone in that edict.

I heartily endorse that approach, counsel my clients similarly, and hope it will spread with the same speed as did the No Smoking in meetings policy in the 1980s and 90s.

Just as cigarette smoke once polluted the atmosphere of business meetings, so too do PDAs now. Perhaps we can hope for the day when the use of BlackBerrys in meetings will go the way of smoking in meetings so that we can all Be Here Now.

"I Speak. You Listen."

The conventional understanding of employee communications can be summed up in four words: “I speak. You listen.”

In other words, many people believe that employee communications is simply top-down, with messages and information emanating from senior managers for consumption by the broad mass of employees. This approach assumes that…

1. Individual employees will actually receive the message when they are supposed to receive it.
2. They will understand it.
3. They will know what to do as a result of getting it.
4. They will act accordingly.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Assumptions like that are presumptuous, arrogant and have a tendency to sneak up behind you and bite you when you least expect it. It’s never good for business.

In fact, effective employee communications involves a hierarchy of responsibilities for everyone in the organization, from the CEO to the individual front line employee; a hierarchy that develops and sustains on-going dialogues, discussion and debate up, down and across the organization, among and between leadership, managers, supervisors and employees.

A couple years ago, we were working with a client and helped them see the truth in this and then helped them implement it – to their enormous benefit, I might add. The hierarchy of responsibilities we developed with them, with a few tweaks, could be adopted for any organization’s communications.

It begins in the executive suite, with the establishment of strategy, direction toward achieving that strategy, the story behind it, and the rules of engagement – i.e., how the business and people will operate in the quest.

For their part, managers must comprehend and activate the strategy, interpreting it for their respective teams and/or business units to make it relevant, and then engage their teams regularly in discussion, dialogue and debate to make it real.

Managers must also establish mid-point and end targets for their teams to aim for, how they will measure progress toward those targets, and adjust as events and needs dictate. To this last point, that means that managers must pay attention to where the business is going, where their industry is headed, the effects of the current economy on both, and how employees are impacted.

At the same time, managers must encourage a two-way conversation by asking employees the right questions, and jointly identifying problems, challenges, opportunities and gaps early.

The last segment of the hierarchy of responsibilities – that of the employees – is the one most often overlooked. In fact, without it, communications, no matter how well planned, will fail.

Employees’ responsibilities demand that they be independent thinkers. They need to be actively engaged in the business at all times, conscious of its health as well as that of its market and industry.

Employees must be active listeners, with a strong desire for continuous learning. And lastly, rather than just bring problems to their supervisors, they must pose ideas, suggestions and solutions.

This set of responsibilities is key. This is employee engagement.

It’s not enough just to announce a directive that employees be engaged. Employee engagement in a healthy operation is a state of affairs where information flows readily up, down and across the organization, without a lot of impediments or formalities about who can and cannot talk to whom. It’s where people feel valued, regardless of their role, where their ideas, suggestions and solutions are welcomed, even if they can’t be acted on for whatever reason.

Employees are emotionally tied to the business, conscious of their own connection to its welfare and how their performance contributes to its success… or failure.

It’s an organization where their good work is rewarded, not just with promotions and pay increases but also with recognition and acknowledgement. (See below: Communicate with your Employees – Doctor’s Orders and Just Say Thank You.) In the end, isn’t that why we do what we do – to contribute to and be part of a healthy, thriving organization, and be appreciated for it?

The Boilerplate Communications Plan

An on-line discussion group about employee communications recently elicited the following panicked, clearly last minute call for help: “Does anyone have a good communication plan they'd be willing to share?”

The notion that there is a one-size-fits-all approach to communication planning is absurd and flies in the face of rational thought. A boilerplate plan will never work because no two situations are the same. Like trying to sell wingtips to the customer that needs running shoes, they may be shoes, but they’re not what the situation calls for and can’t fulfill the intended purpose.

Think of the multitude of possibilities. Are we talking about a financial institution or a process industry; unionized employees in a single factory, or field salespeople working on commission spread across a continent selling medical equipment? Are we trying to communicate with mid-level managers at an international insurance company, or non-commissioned US Army officers based outside the country?

The point of any communications plan is to ensure that the right information gets to the right people at the right time through means that reach them effectively. There is a practical way to develop an appropriate communications plan for any given set of circumstances. But it requires some legwork, along with serious thought and analysis. The initial steps are always the same, regardless of the circumstances.

• Who is your audience? Define it both specifically and generally, in ways that mean something to you and your management team – such as those variables cited above.
  
• Make sure you know as much as possible about your target audience, especially how they prefer to get information.
• Determine what it is you want them to know, and what you want them to do and/or feel as a result of getting your communication, and why.
• Is there any time sensitivity in the communication?

If you can't answer these simple questions, you have no reason to communicate. Answering these questions will put you in a better position to develop an appropriate and effective communications plan consisting of what (content), when, how (through what vehicles) and, specifically, to whom.

The default approach should always be face-to-face communications from immediate supervisors where credibility is highest and where there is the best opportunity for dialogue and question-and-answer. Everything else you may do (e.g., newsletter, email, Twitter, blogs, Intranet postings, bulletin boards, posters, etc.) should come later to reinforce and supplement what was already communicated directly by supervisors.

Your first communication then would be to the supervisors themselves, face-to-face from their superiors, to ensure that they are fully informed and on board – with no doubts or misunderstandings. Also, the supervisors must know what needs to be achieved, and what the employees need to know, do and feel, and – most important – why they need to know it.

Avoid the path of least resistance (i.e., the easy route), a trap that many fall into. Don’t rely on impersonal vehicles like emails as the first and/or only source of communication. Focus instead on getting supervisor understanding and buy-in first so that they will be confident in conveying the necessary information to their direct reports, able to field both pertinent and extraneous questions.

Also, prepare the supervisors with questions they may likely get, along with the appropriate answers. Supervisors should also understand that if they field questions they can't answer, they should promise to get the answer and then follow through.

I hope that’s what the on-line inquirer was looking for. But by the tone of his question, I think he wanted a shortcut and, when he didn’t get the boilerplate plan he was looking for, probably just fired off a bunch of emails to his target audience with his fingers crossed, hoping for the best.

That would be a shame because, really, the answer to his question is pretty straightforward. The key to successful communications is understanding your audience and what you want them to do with the information you give them. It really is that simple.