If it’s that important… pick up the phone!
Sam Phillips, June 10th, 2008 10:31 pm
I entered the business world, young and fresh-faced, after 18 years of full-time education that had, when it came to communication, focused on written and in-person verbal. I had become adept at communicating complicated ideas in a written format, and in explaining them in rather less detail in person.
I lesson I learned slowly (as my boss, Ian Cowley will attest) is that, in business, you have to use a tool that you are never really taught to use - the phone.
That might sound stupid, but let me explain. All through school and university, you are expected to submit work in written form, and to be able to prove your ability to describe it in person on occasion. Seminars and tutorials, where most students sit in silence and absorb the knowledge that their colleagues, who have actually done the appropriate preparation, reward those who can talk well and explain effectively. Your main assessment, however, is almost always in some written form.
If you have problem at university, you either go see a tutor, or send him or her and email. Only one lecturer who ever taught me gave out his office phone number and encourage people to ring it - and I bet nobody ever does.
And so generation upon generation of extensively educated people knock on the door of the business world without any formal training in the most basic of skills. I was the same; I’d never used the phone as an interface for business before and was reticent to do so, and I still see a lot of people who seem to be under the impression that text-based communication works well in all circumstances. These people are wrong.
Even the most experienced communicators find it difficult to convey exact meaning and tone in a written form. At work, I frequently get extensive emails that I can’t make head nor tail of, and require a lengthy reply. I’m the fastest typist in our office (with a score of 400+ on this test, without fail, and occasionally 500+), and it will still take me 20 minutes to put together an 800 word email. That’s a lot of time to take away from the serious business of writing code. Often, a 5 minute phone call would knock the whole subject on the head - because nobody types as fast as they talk!
Here is how people should treat communication methods:
Email - good for information-intensive communications that will last a number of days, and will often supplement phone calls. You can’t look up information from a phone call, so for hard data, email is the place. But do yourself a favour; tune your email down to only check the server every 20 minutes or so. This does wonders at reducing the immediacy.
Instant Messenger - good only for very quick questions, and passing around snippets of information. It is impossible to run any sort of business process via this limited medium.
Phone - seems like it takes longer, but is good for actually getting stuff done.
In Person - the very best. Take every opportunity you can to see and experience the people to which you are talking. These conversations are almost always the least guarded and most productive.
So to those people who think that the email is the place for long task descriptions and the phone is simply for quick questions, think again. This is the real world; your long, rambling email is simply not going to be read. Email is fine for a quick question, but if you fancy getting something actually done… pick up the phone.
Oh, and I am so near to putting a filter on my email that automatically deletes anything marked at a priority higher than ‘normal’. I have never, ever, received a ‘high’ priority email that had any right to its lofty status. If it’s that important… pick up the phone.
