Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Modern lack of communication

In other social worlds there were rules.

Fish eaten on Fridays.

Only horses sweat.

Stand up when a lady enters the room.

Take your hat off in church.

Now we have e-mail - perhaps we should have some rules - for e-mail, for chatting, mobile phones etc.

1. Do not text while talking to someone face to face. Devote your attention to one thing at a time and actually you may actual effectively communicate.
2. E-mailing someone three lines about a subject is not actually working on something. Stop using e-mail as audit trail back covering exercise.
3. Do not start mails with no salutation or any personal touches - we've all done it, it is not nice
4. Do not use chat instead of walking over to someone to talk
5. or to use it to pretend you are working
6. cc'ing your boss on all your mails is not big, not clever and not a substitute to writing your reports or communicating properly.
7. Flaming is a bad idea. Really. You will be scorched. Move away from the keyboard!
8. Passing a mail to you to someone else to answer for you is rude - reply saying you getting someone else better qualified/less busy to deal with it please.
9. Never ever ever hit reply all without checking the circulation. Ruthlessly cull your own circulation lists. Limit the traffic.
10. Less is more. Send less mails or even Stop Mailing some people. Really try the phone or in person. Because, think what you are doing. What people now do all day is send each other memos or read them. Not even twenty years ago, we actually did this thing called work at work. Think how long you spend all day going through the slew of e-mails, demanding, pleading or simply the two liner to show involvement. Stop adding to this tidal wave of drivel! Write what needs writing. Ruthlessly cull you circulation list. Major cause of project over runs - reading all the two line e-mails from people trying to appear involved in the project.


Two postings in one month. Too much

No comments: