garygilliland:

Having spent too many years working with consultants from the big firms I can sympathise with the ideas George Orwell presented in his 1946 essay on Politics and the English Language. Swap out politics and replace it with consultant, business or marketing speak and you can see that the trend for poor ideas disguised with fancy writing which Orwell identified sixty years ago is still going strong.

Three quotes in particular have stuck with me

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

“….language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought”

“Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

If you recognise any of these things in your own communications then maybe it’s time to change your writing or examine the ideas behind it.

George Orwell: Politics and the English Language

Professional life is a series of questions. Sometimes, it’s a simple matter of presenting the bare facts in writing. But the more critical moments come in face to face interaction with other people. The key to success in these moments is not being right but minimising the number of times that you are wrong. This doesn’t mean avoiding the tough questions but rather managing the situation.

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This year mobile telecom companies in the UK expected to handle 200 million text messages on New Year’s eve. This is either a positive indication that we’re all generally a nice bunch of people or that the depth of our relationships has sunk to the level where we can say everything in 160 characters. Sadly as is evidenced by the success of other text based, impersonal methods such e-mail, social networks and instant messaging, it seems that the second is the more likely.

We’ve all heard the stories about people being fired, dumped and divorced by email or text. The general response to this is normally consternation and yet we happily conduct friendships and manage staff using these same methods. Granted these technologies have their uses but communication should be about more than simply exchanging raw information.

Imagine only having read the lyrics to your favourite song or the script to favourite movie. You could admire the writing and follow the story but it wouldn’t be the same experience as actually seeing or hearing it performed. We can read more into what is said by listening to the speaker’s tone of voice and observing their body language than we can ever get from a transcript. The additional element is the performance and the hidden factor is time. Both performer and audience have an unspoken agreement to dedicate their attention to the ‘job’ of communication.

When writing we try to be brief and to the point but when we talk, the conversation inevitably roams. It is here that conversation becomes most useful, we explore new ideas, learn more about the other person and most importantly build deeper relationships with the other person.

If you restrict your communications to e-mail, SMS etc a huge portion of the picture will be missing. It’s difficult to gauge intangible factors like morale and confidence from a written report. Regardless of what you call it (‘face time’, ‘management by walking about’ etc) actually speaking to others, be they staff, team mates, suppliers or customers, is the best way to interact with people in business.

Try talking, it’s time consuming and inefficient but could be the best thing you do.

photo by SteveFE

ZDNet’s IT Project Failures Blog has a great write up on how organisations have handled communications about major outages and have come out looking better.

7 tips for handling post-failure communications by ZDNet‘s Michael Krigsman — There are two parts to every technology failure: the issue itself and the difficult process of explaining the problem to unhappy customers. Although technical failures are unpredictable, end-user satisfaction is usually a function of management rather than technology. Given the high stakes, it’s important for all technology companies to develop an effective failure communication plan.

E-mail overload happens to all of us, so rather just accepting it as a fact of life we can learn to manage it. Across the web you’ll find dozens of methods and software tools which claim to make life easier, many of these are needlessly complex but with the application of a few simple steps you can ease the burden considerably.

Filter spam

Like everyone you are probably inundated with ‘junk’ e-mail from both legitimate sources such as mailing lists and from more dubious sources. These take time to process and waste mental bandwidth so get rid of them. Review your subscriptions to mailing lists and unsubscribe from those you no longer need.

To deal with the more unscrupulous mailers you’ll need to use an automated antispam tool. There are too many of these to mention but your IT department or service provider will offer something that will manage the majority of the problem. If you install a spam filter ensure you keep it updated and check it regularly for false positives.

Assuming that you’ve managed to minimise spam you should now be left with an inbox which contains primarily legitimate messages. Each of these has to be dealt with so I have outlined a series of steps which should help you manage your workload.

Setup Your System

Setup two new folders in your e-mail client, called Action and Archive. In addition to these new folders you should also setup a desktop search service from companies like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and my personal favourite Copernic. These tools automatically index the e-mail on your system and provide comprehensive search tools. This eliminates the need to create a detailed filing structures within your e-mail client, provides enhanced search options and best of all reduces house keeping requirements.

Don’t Do It

I’m not suggesting that you stop using e-mail but rather you stop it using you. Set aside a time to process e-mail, the consensus would seem to be that blocking out two or three slots in day to process mail is best. During other times close down your e-mail client or at least ensure the the new mail notification is off so that it does not become a distraction. The same applies to instant messaging, Blackberries etc. The constant threat of a new message is a distraction and regardless of how disciplined you think you are, you will find yourself checking for new messages when you should be doing other more productive work.

Two Minute Processing

When you finally settle down to a processing session apply the two minute rule. In other words each message gets at most two minutes of triage or action before deciding what to do with it. During this initial session you can do one of four things with each message.

Delete / Dump – spam should be deleted immediately but so should thanks you’s, FYI’s etc. Information only messages which do not require action should also be deleted or dumped into your archive as soon as they have been read.

Delay – based on the two minute rule, if the message is long, or requires considerable thought before action, then file the message in your Action folder for later processing. Depending on the nature of the message you can either return to it when you have finished processing your inbox or flag it for follow up at a later more appropriate date. In this case it can useful to block out a specific time in your calendar to deal with the particular message.

Delegate – if the message is better dealt with by a colleague then pass it on to them. Delete the original if it does not require follow up or move it to the Action folder and set a follow up flag if required. Let the recipient know what actions you require and importantly let them know if and how you need to be updated on progress. This ensures that you only receive the information you require.

Do - if you can action the message quickly i.e. within the two minute rule then do it and then delete or file the original in your archive.

At the end of each session it is important to process your Action folder. Set up appointments with yourself for those items which require extended time and then archive the messages. Review the other items you have placed in the folder and ensure that they are still active and that you have an appropriate action plan in place. Delete or archive those messages which are complete.

I would also suggest you schedule a regular detailed review to ensure that the contents of the Action folder are all still relevant and being managed.

At the end of each session you should have an empty inbox, a well defined list of e-mail action items and hopefully more peace of mind.

photo by clix