Minding Gaps

What Leaders Can Learn from the Best TV Commercial Ever

 

By Thomas J. Lee

You may be too young to remember the best TV commercial ever. If you’re not, don’t blame me for reminding you of the fact.

As far as we’re concerned, the best TV commercial isn’t necessarily the cutest or the funniest. It isn’t necessarily titillating or provocative. It doesn’t necessarily have terrific cinematic or artistic qualities. It didn't necessarily run during a Super Bowl.

It’s the best TV commercial ever simply because it makes its point so well. As proof of that, just about any American old enough to remember it can, almost 25 years after it first aired.

And it’s the best TV commercial ever because it hammers home a business case for the service it is selling, which, for our purposes, just so happens to reinforce important insights of value to any manager or leader. Even today, you occasionally hear people citing that TV commercial in business discussions. Nothing rivals face-to-face human contact, they’ll say, and they’ll be right.

Here it is, and here is a little background to it. Do you remember it?

The best TV commercial ever was produced by the legendary Chicago advertising firm of Leo Burnett for United Airlines, and it began airing in 1989. It was filmed in dramatic hues of black and white to intensify the warmth of the characters. It featured Ben, a beleaguered manager whose company was just fired by a longstanding and highly valued client.

The spot has Ben, in shirtsleeves and vest, convening a quick management meeting to announce the news. His message is blunt and compelling. The company is losing touch with its clients. It has to reinvigorate its lifeblood of relationships.

An assistant hands Ben a stack of United tickets—back then they were on card stock—and Ben begins handing them out to the individual managers. A manager objects: "But Ben, that's more than 200 cities." Ben is unmoved. Someone asks Ben where he’s going, and he replies: “To visit that old friend who fired us this morning.”

You’re smart enough to draw your own conclusions and applications from this commercial for your work. What are they?

Here are mine: Don’t lose touch with people. Don’t rely on email and telephone. Don’t think of social media as synapses or nutrients of relationships; they are neither. Remember that human beings thrive in community with other human beings. The more you nurture and strengthen that sense of community, the better your leadership will be.

 

© Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved. 

Yahoo's New Remote-Work Policy Needs Flexibility

 

By Thomas J. Lee

Yahoo’s new chief executive, Marissa Mayer, has moved quickly to turn around the company’s stolid culture and position it for change. Within days of her celebrated arrival last summer she purchased thousands of new iPhones for employees. That was only one of several initiatives intended to make the company more innovative and productive.

So perhaps we should cut her some slack on Yahoo’s new policy regarding remote workers. Like many other large companies, Yahoo has encouraged employees to work part of their time or all of their time from home. That has had a number of people-affirming consequences. It has enabled couples to balance two careers more readily, and it has facilitated child care for working moms. It has also saved corporate funds on real estate.

Yahoo’s support for remote working will end in June, according to reports on All Things D, a website devoted to the technology and digital industry. (You can read the two stories here and here.) Citing the need for more and better collaboration, and in the hope of nurturing more innovation, Ms. Mayer is requiring all Yahoo employees to work physically in offices alongside their their colleagues.

While there is an argument for people to work together in the same space, Yahoo’s new policy strikes me as overreach. I say that for four reasons.

First, any large company has multiple offices—not uncommonly in an array of countries and time zones—and therefore remote collaboration is already a way of life. Yahoo itself has offices in Bangalore and Beijing. The drawbacks of remote working are part of business in the 21st century, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

Second, a significant number of high-value employees have made major life decisions on the basis of the prior policy. Home ownership, spousal employment, and court-ordered child-care arrangements are not easy things to change in a matter of several months. Moreover, as a matter of simple equity, some employees have undoubtedly left prior jobs and joined Yahoo in part because of the flexibility and freedom of its remote-working policy.

Third, like a layoff or any other management decision with tectonic consequences, this policy shift is likely to divert the focus of Yahoo employees away from business strategy and operations to the policy change itself, at a time when Yahoo can least afford the diversion. In some cases that kind of collateral damage is unavoidable, but when it can be avoided or minimized, it should be.

Fourth, in my own experience, remote working is every bit as productive as office-based working is—perhaps even more so. I personally work with several executives of Fortune 100 companies who maintain home offices, and they are some of the most efficient, productive people I know.

There is some potential middle ground here, and if my voice were heard in Sunnyvale, it would say this: In-office work arrangements are indeed conducive to collaboration and innovation, as opposed to sheer efficiency and productivity, which seem to thrive in remote arrangements. When people work together, they run into one another and share ideas in the cafeteria, washrooms, corridors, and elevators. People also develop more appreciation for one another’s special expertise by working in their presence. All that is good.

But that can be accomplished equally well by bringing remote-working teams together for a few days every month or every quarter, by having regular online conferences in between, by coming together for sophisticated professional-development programs, and by using several new programs and apps to facilitate remote collaboration. As an aside, companies should be budgeting more for airline travel and meetings anyway. That is money and time well spent.

By modifying the new policy, Yahoo can avoid the trauma of forcing high-value employees to choose whether husband or wife is able to keep a job or remain on track for an MBA, and it can demonstrate that new policies need not take the form of Draconian reversals that rattle everyone.

Just my two cents.

 © Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

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A Worm In the Apple: Tim Cook's Apology for iPhone's Lousy Maps

 

By Thomas J. Lee

By now surely everyone knows that Apple's new iPhone 5 has a map function that leaves something to be desired. The Washington Monument is on the wrong side of Constitution Avenue, for one thing. The Battersea Bridge in London looks eerily like the infamous Tacoma Narrows Bridge that collapsed in 1940. Satellite views everywhere are obscured by cloud cover.

But an odd thing happened Friday. Apple's CEO apologized for the mess. Even more astonishing, he recommended that iPhone 5 buyers use online maps from rivals Google and Microsoft until Apple fixes things. It was a little like that scene in Miracle on 34th Street, when Kris Kringle advises Macy's shoppers to see if Gimbels has the item they want.

Now a few weeks ago we devoted this blog to the problem of executives who say the wrong thing in very public ways. In passing, we briefly discussed the public apology: whether and how executives and other well-known persons should fess up.

The standard is: Are their apologies prompt? Are they voluntary? Are they sincere? Are they humbling? Are they reassuring? Are they credible?

The acid test for any apology is whether the offended person (the apologee, to coin a word) accepts it on its face. That question usually answers itself intuitively and emotionally: whether the apologee wants to have anything more to do with the offending person.

This question is always for the apologee, never for the rest of us, to answer. It is only the apologee who can weigh the pain of the offense against the relief of the apology.

A widely cited example was Hillary Clinton's acceptance of Bill Clinton's apology after the Lewinsky scandal. Many people believed at the time that she should not have accepted the apology as she did. But it was not their decision. It was hers and hers alone. Only she could decide.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, a leader who is apologizing for saying or doing the wrong thing must remember that he is never the judge of his own apology, any more than he is the judge of his own leadership. Rather, it is the people with whom he is communicating who cast judgment on his communication; just as it is would-be, could-be followers who decide whether to recognize or reject the leader’s leadership.

The apology from Apple CEO Timothy D. Cook is a case in point. Last week, in an effort to make amends for bringing the iPhone 5 to market with an inadequate and inaccurate maps function, Cook publicly apologized and suggested that consumers try alternative services from Google and Microsoft. "We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers," Cook said. "We are doing everything we can to make Maps better."

My own sense of things is that Cook's apology met the standards that people need an apology to meet. It was prompt, not delayed. It was voluntary, not forced. By recommending services from competitors, it certainly was sincere. It struck me as humbling and reassuring, too. All in all, pretty good.

I'll let my money do my talking, though. My current cellular contract is expiring soon. I have been inclined to get an iPhone 5. If the Maps function appears to be improving, then Cook's apology will be self-evidently credible, too. So will my acceptance of it.

What do you think?

 

© Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)

by Thomas J. Lee

Sad though it was, the news of Neil Armstrong's death on Saturday recalled a time when Americans were cohesive and enthusiastic about something—a time when we were proud of a historic, heroic achievement and appreciative of the leadership that had made it possible.

It brought us all back to the incredible day in 1969 when, thanks to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the impossible became reality. Only two generations before, scarcely anyone had thought it was even remotely possible for people to fly, let alone travel through space. But here, in my grandmother's lifetime, we had progressed from a pair of brothers at Kitty Hawk to a pair of astronauts on the surface of the moon.

We could see it for ourselves: Two human beings were walking, or bounding, on the dust of another heavenly body. We could see them with our own eyes and hear them with our own ears. It was one of those few moments—and one of even fewer good moments—that everyone alive would remember as long as they were alive. No one could possibly forget it.

As it happens, only a few days before Mr. Armstrong died, I was thinking about him and his legacy, as I finished reading Cronkite, Douglas Brinkley's splendid new biography of Walter Cronkite, which talks at length about the space program and the lunar landings. I found myself wondering why the first man on the moon had chosen such a quiet life for himself in the decades that followed.

As you may know, Armstrong lived out his life on a farm outside Cincinnati and in the classrooms of the estimable University of Cincinnati. He was a picture of grace, dignity, and humility. He gave occasional talks on technology and space, and only last year testified before Congress on the decline of NASA, but for the most part this humble, unassuming gentleman spurned the mantle of large leadership that could have been his, and its legacy ours.

In contrast, his fellow Ohio astronaut, John Glenn, became a highly regarded U.S. senator and, at one point, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Glenn's public persona cast a long shadow over Armstrong. Glenn aspired to large public leadership, whereas Armstrong did not.

Let us be careful with our words here, as my intent is not to disparage Armstrong's life and accomplishments. To the contrary, I wish to honor them, to recognize them, and also to put them into a meaningful context, from which we can draw lessons for our own lives.

Leadership takes many forms. There are visionary leaders, moral leaders, custodial leaders, tyrannical leaders, and more. The only thing they have in common is the allegiance of people who choose to follow their lead. To have that allegiance, they do the work of leadership, which is to build the engagement of people around a concern and a cause.

One need not be famous to do this. Millions of parents, coaches, and teachers do it all the time, with little or no recognition. Indeed, I have no reason to believe that Armstrong wasn't doing this very thing with students in his classes on a smaller scale.

But he could have done it on a large scale. He could have led the charge toward American technological superiority in a way that few others could dream of. He could have given speech after speech, written book after book, created a foundation or an institute, all to marshal support for space exploration and technology. He could have provided the face and the voice that the cause of STEM education—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—so sorely needs.

That he chose not to do so is no reflection on him or his character, and I certainly do not wish to impugn either. It is, however, an object lesson in the nature and challenge of leadership.

Leadership is neither a title nor a trait, nor in the case of someone like Armstrong is it a trophy. It is, rather, work; and it is hard work at that. One need not choose to undertake this work, and that is fine. But one cannot leave a legacy of big change without it, either.

Neil Armstrong was a hero, a hero's hero. They don't get much bigger than taking mankind's first steps on the moon. I applaud him and his courage, along with the extraordinary technological prowess of his fellow astronauts and their thousands of colleagues back on Earth. But a part of me wishes that Armstrong had also risen to the challenge of leading a new generation of exploration and discovery through technology. A part of me wishes that Armstrong had been not just a hero but also a leader.

 
 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

More Employers Ask Job Applicants for Facebook Passwords

by Thomas J. Lee

I am not the least surprised, but I certainly am flabbergasted, that more employers are asking job applicants for Facebook passwords.

It isn't surprising, because many companies have long misunderstood the concept of trust in the workplace. They have assumed that employees should just naturally trust them, without themselves first earning the trust of employees or first investing the same kind of trust in employees.

Life just doesn't work that way. Trust is and always has been a two-way street. It must be earned, and it must be shown. He who doesn't trust is only rarely and briefly accorded any trust. That is as true in our professional lives as in our personal lives.

Trust is far too precious and far too tender to be treated as if it can be presumed or commanded.

If not surprising, these policies are nonetheless flabbergasting. They set the tone for brazen disregard for employee dignity. What company would want employees who are so deferential, so servile, as to tolerate that? 

If I were in charge of the hiring at these companies, I might actually ask for a Facebook password just to see which job applicants would refuse to provide it despite expecting that it would cost them the job. Those are the applicants I would be inclined to hire. In the long run, they will stand up for integrity and for their own dignity. How refreshing.

Give me an employee who knows right from wrong, smart from stupid, trust from mistrust, decent from indecent. I can build a fine company with people like that.

 

 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Presidents and Social Media

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Twitter is fine for its original purpose—updating friends on an ETA or changing plans at the last minute—but its 140 characters are scarcely enough for the nuances and complexity of serious discourse.

Until someone invents a robust social-media bullhorn, presidents (and anyone else with a big message) should stay off it.

Just one man's opinion, worth what you're paying for it.

 

Coming on Friday

Be Your Own First Follower

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Have Your Brain Waves Call My Brain Waves

 

by Thomas J. Lee

We're all familiar with the children's experiment of using two empty tin cans tied together by a string. Supposedly the tin cans can carry a conversation by vibrating in sync as they capture sound waves at one end and then reproduce the same sound waves at the other end.

It turns out that something similar happens between people. You can think of each tin can as a primitive human brain. Just as a can absorbs and produces sound through vibration, so the human brain creates and receives sound waves as brain waves. The waves are the embodiment of information—everything from facts to emotions, from observations to ideas, from names to arguments.

Researchers at Princeton University recently discovered that, in good communication, a speaker's brain waves closely resemble a listener's. MRI scans of the two brains show them to be in sync. In poor communication, the opposite is true; the brain waves are not in sync. Thus, the power of communication is the power to bring brain waves into alignment.

Interviewed in the new issue (December 2010) of Harvard Business Review, Princeton Professor Uri Hasson says the connection between two persons who are communicating well is "almost visceral." He calls it coupling, and it seems to have emotional implications. We have all experienced it, when we are able to complete someone else's sentences, or vice versa, when we feel at odds with someone we don't quite understand.

"There's nothing mystical about this," Professor Hasson told HBR. "It's not a Jedi mind trick. This is what communication is. It is what humans do best, and it's unique."

Researchers have a great deal of work ahead of them, for many questions remain to be answered: Why do some pairs of people lean more to alignment than others? Can an individual's will, or resistance, facilitate or block her from coupling with another individual? What actually occurs during miscommunication? How do children learn to communicate?

I find the research especially tantalizing, for it raises all kinds of further questions about the physics behind leadership communication: What happens during the process of influence? Of inspiration? Does anything special occur in the presence of eloquence? What does the presence or absence of credibility do to brain waves? Of repetition? Or propaganda? How does the written word or imagery or implicit communication create brain waves in the absence of sound? The good professor at Princeton cannot get back to his lab fast enough for me.

In the meantime, my brain waves thank your brain waves for reading today.

 
(c) 2010 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Finally, a Clear Explanation of Net Neutrality

 

by Thomas J. Lee

If, like me, you have been just a little bewildered, perplexed, and befuddled by the debate over the arcane concept of net neutrality—and, frankly, either you have been, or you haven’t been paying attention—you will welcome this clear and comprehensive explanation by Joseph Nocera of The New York Times.

Joe Nocera is a highly regarded business writer and weekly columnist. I have never been able to detect any inherent bias in his writing, though he frequently comes to well-informed and well-reasoned conclusions and judgments in his columns.

The issue of net neutrality has been simmering for several years now. Mainly it has been confined to the geeks of Silicon Valley, but every once in a while a politician pokes his head into the ether to say something about it.

Most recently, there was a lot of criticism of Google, whose corporate motto is "do no evil," for brokering a deal with Verizon that would compromise neutrality on wireless devices.

I'll confess that I really didn't understand what, if anything, was at stake in this debate or who, if anyone I cared about, had anything real to lose.

My lingering suspicion was that the only ones concerned about it were nerds using terabytes to play in virtual worlds, download Swedish movies, and pirate music, along with human germs determined to send spam from Nigerian princes, craft the next generation of viruses, and find clever ways to breach my privacy. So, frankly, I really didn't give two cents about the whole issue.

I wasn't far off. Despite all the hew and cry about net neutrality, Nocera thinks the debate is “much ado about very little.”

Don’t let that prevent you from reading this column, however. At the very least, you’ll be able to carry on a conversation about a technical subject with your kids.

 

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The Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint

 

Here’s a lighthearted post for a listless Friday afternoon in late summer, as the kids go back to school and our colleagues drift home from vacation. Created by Peter Norvig, director of research for Google, it is a brilliant riff on what the Gettysburg Address would have sounded like if Abraham Lincoln had used PowerPoint.

It has been on the net for years, and you may have seen it before. Frankly, I will never grow tired of it. As you view it, click the NEXT button to move through the deck of six slides.

Before anyone writes to remind us of the sanctity of Gettysburg National Cemetery, be assured we are appreciative. A few years ago we spent an afternoon at Gettysburg, and we recommend it to every American.

Trumpets, puhleeze.

 

"And now please welcome Mr. Abraham Lincoln, president of these old United States of ours."

"Good morning. I said, Good morning!

"Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7? No, that's not right. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to reboot. Hold on a minute.

"Um, my name is Abe Lincoln and I'm your president. While we're waiting, I want to thank Judge David Wills, chairman of the committee supervising the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. It's great to be here, Dave, and you and the committee are doing a great job. Gee, sometimes this new technology does have glitches, but we couldn't live without it, could we?

"Oh, is it ready? Okee-dokee, here we go:

 

Gettysburg Cemetery Dedication by Abraham Lincoln

 

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By the Numbers: A Content Analysis of Twitter

By the Numbers is a weekly feature presenting business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion.

Since its inception last summer, By the Numbers has explored numerical aspects of a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, information overload, trust in business, strategic communication, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, the productivity of meetings, nonverbal communication, and fear in the workplace, among others.

You can read any or all of those posts whenever you wish, just by scrolling down to the hundreds of short essays that follow this one. For a particular subject, use the search button in the right column. Please note that, beginning in June, By the Numbers will appear on the first and third Mondays only.

Today we address the purposes of micro-blogging, the most popular form of which is Twitter.

Pear Analytics, a consulting firm based in San Antonio, Texas,  analyzed the content of 2,000 tweets (i.e., Twitter messages) that were sent over a two-week period in August 2009. All were sent in English, within the United States, and during the daytime.

The content analysis showed this breakdown of the apparent worth or purposes of messages:

Pointless Babble	41 %
Conversation	38 %
Worthy of Passing Along	9 %
Self-Promotion	6 %
Spam	4 %
News	4 %

As you review this data, you may wish to ask yourself whether your own experience with Twitter is appreciably different. If so, how? If not, does this content analysis suggest that you should be regarding Twitter differently? In what way?

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"We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is PowerPoint"

 
 

The New York Times carried a front-page article yesterday that is mandatory reading for anyone concerned about leadership and its energy: clear, credible, compelling communication.

The article reports on a debate in the high command of the U.S. Department of Defense over the use of PowerPoint.

That’s all I’m going to say for now. Just read the article for yourself. When you finish, come back here and leave a comment.

Here’s the article.

 

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By the Numbers: Internet Usage Rises to 13 Hours per Week

By the Numbers is a weekly feature presenting business data that is noteworthy, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. It usually appears on Monday.

Since its inception last summer, By the Numbers has explored issues of employee engagement, organizational culture, information overload, trust in business, strategic communication, layoffs, job satisfaction, nonverbal communication, and fear in the workplace, among others.

Today we look at the dramatic increase in Internet usage since 2000.

A new Harris Poll has found that adults are devoting more and more time to the Internet. The average for all American adults is now at 13 hours online per week.

The trend is widely variable, though. Twenty percent of adults computer users are online for only two hours a week or less. Fourteen percent are online for 24 hours a week or more.

The average has increased from 7 hours per week a decade ago and from between 8 and 9 hours in mid-decade. In 2007, it stood at 11 hours per week.

Interestingly, users between the ages of 30 and 65 spend significantly more time online—averaging 17 or 18 hours a week—than their counterparts younger than 30 or older than 65.

As you reflect on this data, ask yourself whether your efforts to communicate by social media are keeping pace with the steady rise in online usage.

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Answers to Your Questions on Social Media

 

The questions about social media just keep coming. If your CEO or chairman asked, could you confidently answer any of these questions, let alone all of them?

• How are high-performance organizations making the most of social media? What are they being sure to do, and what are they being sure to avoid?

• Is there a compelling value proposition for proactively using social media?

• Is a lot of what you hear about social media just the usual hype? Is there any real value to a company? Is it just another fad? What can anyone say of value in 140 characters, anyway?

• Are high-performance companies really using social media to connect with employees faster than ever? If so, how is it working? Exactly how are they doing it?

• How are they using social media to enhance and maintain their reputation in the marketplace? How well is it working?

• How are high-performance companies using social media to respond to rumors? To reach and attract Millennium Generation employees? To exercise more agility in the marketplace? To monitor cyberspace conversations? To troubleshoot customer complaints and issues?

• Are they just using the "old standbys" of social media: Twitter and Facebook? Or are they identifying other, lesser-known social-media sites that reach niche stakeholders?

• Are high-performance companies forbidding employees from reading any social-media sites while at work? If so, is such a ban effective? Doesn't it backfire with Millennial employees?

• Are executives of high-performing organizations blogging? Have these blogs taken the place of conventional, slower media? Do the executives write their own? Who has time to ghost them? Is ghostwriting publicly acknowledged?

• In short, what's working, and what isn't working, in the new world of social media?

We’ll get the answers to those questions—and to your own specific questions about social media—in a battery of studies in early 2010. We’ll conduct four studies on social media. Each will target a particular sector. One will look at social media for service companies such as law firms, medical practices, airlines, engineering and construction companies, consulting firms, and hospitals. Another will examine social media for the retail sector. Still another study will explore social media for manufacturing companies. Finally, yet another study will delve into social media for non-profit organizations.   

We’re enrolling corporatations and organizations as co-sponsors of these four studies now. To inquire, just send us a note (to info@arceil.com) with your name and telephone number or telephone (+1.847.247.2241), and we will follow up.

These studies will produce real-world answers for real-world questions in each of these four sectors. They will find real-world solutions for real-world problems. Each study will be broad enough to provide guidance on general strategies and policies but specific enough to be appropriate and relevant to its sector.

Only those companies that co-sponsor the projects will benefit from them. The studies will be proprietary to the co-sponsoring companies for one full year from the completion of the projects.

Each co-sponsor will help design and customize the research, so the studies will reflect every co-sponsor’s own concerns and interests. They will result in relevant findings and actionable recommendations. Best of all, because several companies will join together to sponsor it, each company's share of the total cost will be moderate.

The final reports will have a written executive summary and PowerPoint slides for presentation of findings. At the conclusion of the projects, we will host webinars for the co-sponsors that present the findings and responds to questions.

Our initial research shows a wide variety of approaches and practices, in terms of both substance and tone. Our intent is to establish a benchmark of policies that each sponsor can use for evaluation and improvement.

We will enroll co-sponsors on a first-come, first-serve basis. Only those companies that co-sponsor the projects will share the results.

The research will be managed by Thomas J. Lee, founder and president of Arceil Leadership Ltd. A subject-matter expert and frequent speaker on leadership and organizational communication, Tom has culled best practices from many major, pace-setting corporations: Nordstrom, Starbucks, Hewlett-Packard, Federal Express, Harley-Davidson, Chick-fil-A, 3M, McDonald’s, DuPont, Motorola, Weyerhaeuser, Walgreens, and others.

A former journalist and speechwriter for Fortune 100 CEOs, Tom is an alumnus of the University of Chicago, where he serves as a mentor to graduate students, and of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His clients have included the No. 1 or No. 2 company in such disparate industries as heavy manufacturing, finance, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, motorcycles, energy, food and beverage, and chemicals, among others. Beginning in 2010, he will teach an online course in communication and engagement for the University of California.

Please contact us at 847-247-2241 for details, including fees and procedures, or write to us at info@arceil.com. Or write to us at info@arceil.com, and we can arrange a convenient time to talk by telephone. We look forward to working with you.

Quote / Unquote: Charles Dickens on Face-to-Face Communication

 

Today we introduce another feature of the Minding Gaps blog. It will appear frequently but irregularly. To be known as Quote/Unquote, the feature will offer a simple, noteworthy quotation on some aspect of leadership, communication, or business. In some cases we will also provide context, comment, or questions to stir discussion; in other instances, the quotation will stand alone. We begin with a prescient quotation from a famous 19th century British author.

Charles Dickens, perhaps best known for his Victorian novels A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and A Christmas Carol, must have been thinking of only the telegraph when he remarked:

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone

who with his soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

Dickens, who died in 1870, could have known only of the theoretical basis for the telephone, which wouldn’t be developed and patented until 1876. The generations of technology since—from the telephone to tubes and transistors to teletype to television to Telex to texting to Twitter (honest, the alliteration wasn't intentional)—have brought us ever greater speed and access to information, while steadily reducing the intimacy and touch between and among us, and perhaps raising shields behind which we cower and quiver, as Dickens seems to have been predicting.

What would Dickens think of today's communication? We pass more data back and forth, to be sure, but whether we understand one another even an iota more is questionable. Today, many of us take peculiar pride in cramming indecipherable and impromptu abbreviations into 140 characters and quickly pressing SEND, often disseminating the shorthand to people we have never met and never will meet.

Let’s ponder:

• Was Dickens exaggerating the social or psychic cost of electronic communication?

• Do you think he was just a Luddite at heart?

• What have we lost through technology? What role does email play in that?

• Is the rush to social media (such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogging) problematic for you?

• Beyond speed and access, what have we gained through technology?

• What is Dickens implying by references to “soul” and “brave and true”?

• Are we less soulful, brave, and true than our parents and grandparents? If so, what exactly is the nature and cost of that? 

• How do we best cope with the implications of all this on human understanding and social cohesion?

Stop the Web 2.0, I Want to Get Off

Not really. But sometimes, I’m telling you.

For the uninitiated, Web 2.0 refers to the second generation of the Internet, a two-way street. It is what the Internet is today.

Initially, in the 1990s, the Web was a waterfall or a cataract of information, all of it cascading downward. It was static, an online catalogue and newspaper and encyclopedia: interactive only insofar as you might use it to make purchases or reservations in a secure transaction or to search for data that could help you make better decisions. In retrospect, we now refer to that as Web 1.0.

Beginning five or six years ago, the Web evolved into a riverway or a canal, with barge traffic flowing in both directions. More to the point, it became dynamic, a community and a conversation: not merely transactional but broadly participative and transformative. Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and Wikipedia, not to mention this very blog, embody the virtual public square of the Internet today. This new generation of technology is known as Web 2.0.

Now in virtually every respect, I find Web 2.0 exhilarating and energizing. It is a big part of my life, as it is of yours, for sure. Much of our work life plays out on Web 2.0.

But in one prominent respect, I find Web 2.0 most unfortunate, even at times repugnant. I speak of the comments section that often follows an essay or video or other feature posted to an Internet site, often a newspaper or a political site. Some of these comments are so revolting, so vile, so profane, that decent people can only shudder. I myself want nothing to do with them. I want to turn off the comments sections permanently.

Take a look at this fascinating series of iconic photographs, and then, if you stomach it, read the exchange of comments that follows. In particular, look at comments numbered 4, 16, 30, 53, 54. Mind you, this is relatively tame stuff. It is easy to find sites where the comments are far more vitriolic and scornful. But this is sufficient to illustrate the point I am making.

I’d like to see an option at the end of any site with comments that allows the reader or viewer to choose whether to see any comments at all. Nine times out of ten, I would choose not to.

I’d also like to see a requirement for real names to be entered with any comment, and a strict prohibition on verbal abuse and profanity. Yes, I know the argument that the Federalist Papers were anonymous, and I am not a fan of political correctness in the least.

It’s just that we’re living in an era when transparency, authenticity, and civility need to be restored to public discourse. As the comments on so many sites indicate, we’re not there yet. We’re not close to it, and we seem to be moving in the wrong direction.

Leadership and the Internet

I want to share with you a fascinating presentation by Clay Shirky, which I found on ted.com.

It takes about 16 minutes, and it just may change your view of how organizations and their leaders will communicate with their people in the decades ahead. I recommend you devote the time to watching it. Then come back.

Here it is.

Now, after viewing it, think about the implications for leadership and change in your organization. In particular, ask yourself:

• Haven’t “the many” always been talking to “the many”—albeit more slowly? What exactly is changing? How will that affect leadership?

• What does viralism, to coin a word, hold for the future of leadership?

• What are the implications of Twitter and Facebook, in particular, on leadership messaging in your organization?

• How will gaps between the “official truth” and the “ground truth” of your organization become even more problematic?

• How can we harness the power of viral communication to enhance directional change and control chaotic change?

Don't Survey Customers This Way

I happen to use a BlackBerry smartphone under a two-year contract with a wireless provider. The particular model I use, the BlackBerry Bold, is a big improvement over an older model I used to own. Still, its technology and capabilities are a long way from the Apple iPhone’s, and the two-year contract I had to sign makes me feel imprisoned and helpless.

Moments ago I had a chance to voice my unhappiness. BlackBerry sent me a link to an online customer survey. I leaped at the opportunity to vent. Unfortunately, the makers of BlackBerry will never receive my comments, and it’s their fault.

The survey went on and on and on. It asked essentially the same question four or five times with ever-so slight differences. It asked intrusive demographic questions, and it didn’t ask the really important questions, in my judgment.

At several points, I took advantage of short-answer questions to identify my real concerns and to explain that the survey’s rigid format wasn’t generating the information that BlackBerry really needed.

I was well into the survey when I clicked next and faced a forbidding array of choices in response to a silly question. That’s when I gave up. I hit next again and was sternly directed to go back and complete the prior page. It was a bleak choice between answering the many questions or cancelling out altogether. That was an easy decision. I was out of there.

Now I happen to have some professional experience and academic training in survey research, and I can recognize a shoddy survey. BlackBerry, if you’re listening: This was an awful survey. You denied yourselves the benefit of insightful responses, so you aren’t getting them. Too bad for you.

More to the point, if any of you are seeking broader perspective from customers or employees (as you should be, for sure), you should know there are effective and ineffective ways to go about it. Whatever you do, don’t rely on amateurs to design a survey, and don’t take a survey to the field without “flight testing” it beforehand with a couple of focus groups.

Maybe the folks at Apple make the same mistakes. When my contract expires, I will have a chance to find out.

An Illusion of Control

Without realizing it, we often delude ourselves into thinking that a company’s management is in control of communication around business information and news.

In fact that is not the case. It has very likely never been the case. The march of technology—from overnight delivery to fax to email—has steadily eroded the control. Now, microblogging through Twitter and Facebook has dashed all pretense otherwise.

Take a moment to read this incisive article in The Wall Street Journal, forwarded to us by our friend John Gerstner.

Next time you’re drafting a strategic communication plan for a big announcement or the rollout of a key initiative, devote some thinking to the role of social media. You probably cannot predict what will happen, but you can plan for rapid-fire leaks. It’s foolish not to.