Murder On The Communication Express

One of Agatha Christie’s famous mysteries — Murder on the Orient Express — 12 conspirators get on a train, to kill one common enemy. It was not an act of collusion, each conspirator were in it separately, each one of them stabbed the man individually … making all of them equally responsible for the murder.

The story of corporate communication and email is pretty similar. The avengers here, changing the landscape of corporate communication are enterprise social networking appssuch as Slack, Workplace, Jive, Yammer, Bolste, Jostle, Socialcast, Hip Chat, Same Page, Zoho Connect, among many others… Last time I ran a check, I counted 48 enterprise social apps available for a free trial.

This “technological determinism” that is taking place, is not only a “value”, but is also creating new “values”. The impact is that we spent the better half of last year debating — Is Facebook’s Workplace a threat to Slack? Technology drives society, its structure, values, and culture.

Tinder changed our dating paradigms, Facebook changed our values about networking… now these superhero’s are ushering in new work values, as well as, some new challenges outlined below:

https://nordic.businessinsider.com/battle-of-the-work-group-chat-apps-slack-facebook-microsoft-2016-11/

Challenge #1: “Twitter-ization” Of Internal Communication: Increased volume, but definitely circumspect quality. Every idea and initiative is a “#Slack channel”, a “chat group” or “@workplace newsfeed”. Many times, a note on a channel may appear directive and terse, largely because of its brevity. Communication on good ol’ emails had a tone, the padding of a greeting, nuance of language and importance of etiquette. On enterprise social networking apps, the power of a suggestion by a boss can hardly be differentiated from a demand, a suggestion or request.

Challenge #2: Making transactional relationships, yet more operational.While working remotely (working from home), dispersed workforce, flexible hours are becoming more valued, there’s already a increase in the transactional factor of interactions. In a typical workplace setting, we see less unplanned interactions at water coolers, the coffee machines, parking lots, lunch tables, etc. And, personally speaking, I have always found it challenging to motivate a team without eye contact, observing the confidence in stance, checking for frustration or elation in facial expression. It may sound old fashioned, but, people are not robots. Unless we know what makes them thrive and tick, it’s impossible to motivate them — making the art of leadership more trickier in dispersed teams, managed over the Yammers and Slacks of the world.

Challenge #3: The lost art of an open ended dialogue. Work is definitely more structured in online meetings. Conversations are more ‘straight to the point’ via Basecamp, Producteev and Trello lists, with definite advantages of documentation on the cloud. However, what’s lost is a deeper understanding of the issue, the opportunity of hearing from the front-lines, subtle and unique messages from the market and the art of discovery from the ground up. Open ended conversations have a value — and as leaders, we need to factor that back in our discussions.

Challenge #4: Deep work is the killer app of the knowledge economy.“Most people have lost the ability to go deep…spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media”. ‘Deep Work by Carl Newport”

Enterprise social networking apps amplifies this haze — with rapid fire conversations, plethora of groups, boards and channels cause a blur that make email overload seem quite…organized.

The Solution?

Look beyond technology. Invest time and energy in knowing the people who work on your team, what motivates them, makes them tick, etc. While it may seem like a slightly longer process, it will be worth it in the end while doing this remotely.

Don’t be schizophrenic in your communication style — If “emojis” and “thumbs-up” is your app communication style, then one cannot be stuck up offline.

Create an “e-coffee” catch up session, once in a while. Don’t let the team dynamics degenerate into lists and bullets, just because there is too much blur and haze.

The art that’s getting lost in the tsunami of collaboration apps, is deeper employee engagement and motivation. Don’t forget the blood, sweat, and tears of impactful communication — it changed the world back then in Churchill’s time, it does so even now.

Anu