The Downside of Modern Communications
When I started school in the UK, with my parents living in the USA at the time, communication was by “aerogramme” which took up to five days. If you wanted to phone abroad, you had to “book” the call.
Now, we can reach out to anyone anywhere in the world by voice or with a video call if they’re using the same technology or app as we are.
This is great for most. Students studying halfway round the world from home can speak to their families (allowing for time differences!) whenever they want. I even know one who used to “join in” the family dinner on a Sunday evening from their student room in the UK. The family in Asia propped an iPad or some such device up on the dining table and the family could be together.
The downside of being able to contact people so quickly is, of course, that no one needs to make a decision anymore. Need to offer a bigger discount to get that business in China? Phone head office in London. Need approval to increase a credit limit for that sale to a German manufacturer? Ring head office in Atlanta.
In the days of colonial Empire, communications from London to its various plenipotentiaries in the colonies could take months to get to them (and another few to receive a response). Those plenipotentiaries therefore had to be people of considerable expertise and ability to take many of the “difficult” decisions on their own. Nowadays, things are vastly different. I remember reading in a book by one novelist that “Even the ambassador’s driver had more power than the ambassador.”
The motto of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in the 1980s was “Fast decisions worldwide”. It soon changed because clients noticed that they could no longer get “fast decisions”. The reason for those fast decisions was that in pre-email days, local country managers had considerable authority. With a signature, they could approve millions of dollars’ worth of loans on their own. The larger the country they managed, the more they could approve without referring to head office. So, for example, the country manager of Malaysia could approve much more than the country manager for Brunei. Even if the loan was beyond the country manager’s limits, the system was that the proposal went to the regional head office who had a standard turnaround time of 24 to 48 hours. This contrasted with other institutions who were often hamstrung by “credit committees” that met at longer intervals.
From “Fast decisions worldwide”, HSBC went to “Your local global bank”. What its current tagline is I have no idea. The point is that modern communications, whilst a blessing in so many ways, have also deprived figures of authority of much of that authority. Decisions are taken instead by anonymous people in anonymous offices with little idea of the “situation on the ground”. Anyone who has lived abroad and returned to their home country and tried to explain “how things work over there” only to be met with blank stares or cynical laughter will know what I mean.
How else has modern communications technology benefited us? That news travels around the world much faster is one area of improvement (or is it?). Another might be the increase in speed in financial services such as transferring funds. For every downside, I suspect there are more than several upsides. However, to be constantly confronted with “We’ll have to refer that to…” can be tiring at times.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Productivity, Teamwork
"Me-Tubing"?
YouTube must be one of the most popular streaming channels for videos on information on how to do things, where to travel, stuff to buy and a host of other subjects all of which have their fans.
I’m just as guilty as anyone else of going down the YouTube “rabbit hole” for information, stuff to buy, reviews on products and so on. Over the five or so years that I’ve been watching YouTube, it’s become clear that some “YouTubers” (or are they “Vloggers”?) may not appreciate what they’re doing.
An example: I stopped watching a video about “travel electronics” after eight minutes as the presenter still hadn’t come to the point on the products they were showcasing. That’s eight minutes of my life I’ll never get back that were consumed by the presenter displaying their ignorance of events outside the US. This potent combination of mindless chatter and ignorance simply confirmed that this was not a channel worth watching and I marked it as “don’t recommend this channel” in my YouTube account.
They weren’t YouTubing, they were “Me-Tubing”.
People have suggested that I start my own YouTube channel. I haven’t yet for several reasons:
- There are many subjects I could talk on (no "USP").
- I’m aware of my lack of “video presentation expertise”.
- An awful lot of the videos that I’ve watched over the last couple of years all say the same thing. The only differences are usually in the type of tool or product presented or in the experiences being presented.
For example, “Survival” or “Bushcraft” videos all tend to recommend much the same type of equipment. Equally there are plenty of survival videos that show how to make a shelter out of materials available in a forest, out of a tarpaulin or using other materials.
As I’ve said: there are some YouTubers who are great and I watch their videos if it’s a subject that interests me. What I notice is that they all seem to follow a common set of rules:
- Keep it short (5 to 7 minutes is good; if you can’t say what you need to say in that time, you’re wasting other peoples’ time).
- Get to the point – fast. There’s nothing worse than the example I gave above of a 24-minute video where the first eight minutes (or 1/3 of the video) were just the presenter rambling.
- Stick to facts: except to give context or set the scene, don’t speculate, don’t imagine.
For me, if a YouTube video is longer than seven minutes, it must be:
- Either by a presenter who I know to give value OR
- On a subject that really interests to me OR
- Something about which I wish to acquire knowledge.
Of course, travel vlogs are an exception. If anyone can encapsulate the experience, pros and cons of flying business class on Singapore Airlines in seven minutes or less, good luck!
If ever I do start presenting on YouTube, I like to think that I’ll have defined the:
- Target audience.
- Subject or subjects I will present.
- Duration of video (depending on subject of course).
- Important facts that I think audiences will need to know.
What’s your experience of YouTubers or “Vloggers” and how would you approach this activity?
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Customer Care, Selling
Disconnecting
A number of employers have introduced “disconnection” policies, meaning that employees are forbidden to send or answer emails or texts outside office hours.
The idea behind this is that employees should be able to “disconnect” completely from the office and relax during their time off, rather than continually being bombarded by messages.
To an extent, I feel we’ve made a rod for our own backs. The advent of readily available email and messaging technology has naturally meant that everyone can send a long or short message in no time at all. When I first joined the workforce, we had to type memos on paper and then send them. This could only be done during office hours at the office. Now we can do it from anywhere, even 40,000 feet above the earth if our aircraft is equipped with Wi-Fi!
Some fail to appreciate that email and instant messaging are “asynchronous communication”. This means that an email may not be read immediately at the time it’s received (just like an old-fashioned letter or memo). By the time a memo had been typed out, signed, dispatched to the recipient, read and responded to, several hours or even days might have elapsed. This would be especially true if the memo had to get from one office to another miles away. Many of my colleagues have experienced firsthand those who expect instant responses to emails or instant messages they send.
Small wonder then that “disconnect” policies are making an appearance. What happened to the “old-fashioned concept” of asking oneself, when sending an email to somebody overseas, whether it was even likely that they would read it? After all it might be 3 am their time - they would be asleep!
As one who has worked for more than half his life overseas, I often find myself explaining to others that it’s pointless to send an email at (say) nine o’clock our time to the UK as it will be 2 am UK time when it’s received. We’re unlikely to get a response for another seven to eight hours, by which time it will be almost the end of “our” office hours!
The result? A game of “email ping-pong” as each side answers during their respective working hours.
We need to reconnect with the basics of timekeeping and appreciating that, in today’s increasingly connected and globalised markets, we need to once again ask ourselves, “what time is it over there?”
The answer? “Disconnect policies”. Mind you, these aren’t only for dealing with messages from the other side of the globe, but also from one’s own market. The god of “productivity” has far too many worshippers who fail to understand that they aren’t being more productive.
In the same way that going to church, temple, or whatever place of worship one frequents every week doesn’t make one a better adherent to that religion than the person who goes perhaps only on high feast or holy days, trying to fit more into the same space or amount of time doesn’t always make one more productive. On the contrary, it makes one more importunate and stressed.
Does your organisation have a “disconnect policy”? What has been the result? Are people more productive? Have you lost business, have things changed or even improved? In the words of one of my friends disconnection was
“… something I tried for the first time last year and the sky didn’t fall in and saved a LOT of time managing the inbox on the first day back”. Mind you, he works for a reasonably-sized company, rather for himself.
Perhaps disconnection may not be for everyone?
Labels: Leadership, Leisure, Productivity, Teamwork
