Archive for the 'Analysis and Opinion' Category

We have a generation gap to bridge!

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on January 30, 2012
in Analysis and Opinion
. 0 Comments

I’ve reported a number of cases where managers (most famously, Barack Obama)  implement an interrupt-free environment by mandating a “no cellphones” policy in meetings. While I wholeheartedly applaud this behavior, I must in all fairness report a dissenting viewpoint.

I was talking to a Gen Y worker whose company  had launched such a ban, and he told me that he thought it was not a good idea at all, because his millennial generation needed the cellphones to work, he said! To his mind, having a coworker without a cellphone in ringing mode meant they were inaccessible, and hence unavailable to help him get his job done.

This is interesting. It isn’t that the younger set are unaffected by interruptions and information overload; there is ample evidence that they are, and my bet is that they pay a price just like their elders. But unlike the Boomer and Gen X population, these younger folks weigh the pros and cons differently; to them, ubiquitous communication is a part of their lifestyle both on and off the job, and they feel at a loss without it.

Looking at the bigger picture, I’d say that the real goal should be to strike a better balance between communication and concentration that will benefit everybody, Gen Y and Boomers alike. We need a balance because we can’t simply disconnect them and let them work in their diverse methods.  They may have different expectations, but they share the same work environment and the same message flow; they can’t each choose their preferred work style in isolation. Finding a work culture that works for everybody, and that drives nobody nuts, will be a worthy challenge for the coming years.

All alone in the info-flood

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on January 6, 2012
in Analysis and Opinion and Individual Solutions
. 2 Comments

Although practically every organization is full of knowledge workers groaning under a deluge of email, it’s interesting to note that in many of them I run into a small minority of people who have things under control. I discover them on occasion when I explain the various solutions I can bring in, and someone says “Oh, but I already handle this by…” or “I never do that, I always…”

The things they do vary; my favorite are the rare heroes who tell me they turn off all electronic devices after work hours, but there are many variations. Basically these people have developed, on their own, Individual Coping Strategies that permit them to thrive despite the pressure of information overload. These strategies usually coincide with ones I evangelize, perhaps not surprisingly, but are self-developed from scratch by each such individual.

Now, if only they’d proliferate their methods to the entire organization! Rarely someone does, as I’ve described here, but most of these people are happy to use their methods for themselves without raising awareness to it around them. They’re staying afloat, all alone while those around them struggle in vain against the flood of messages. Their impact is felt, however, when the organization – or a senior leader in it – decides to take action; they can set an example when the time comes for a change.

If you are one of these trailblazers, do share your favorite method in the comments!

The iPad and the card file

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on December 18, 2011
in Analysis and Opinion
. 0 Comments

I visited a doctor’s office and was surprised when his secretary pulled out a card – a ruled cardboard rectangle – to fill in my data. She had boxes of such patient cards in her office. A natural first reaction would be that this doctor must be pretty old and behind the times…

Then I saw the doctor, and he was neither old nor behind – in fact he not only had a computer on his desk, but after a few minutes he whipped out an iPad, which he seemed very happy with and used with speed and effectiveness to demonstrate some points to me. So I asked him, what’s with the old cards?

The reply is worth noting: scribbling on a card allows him to maintain a personal interaction with his patients. To type, you have to turn away from the patient and immerse yourself in the machine’s user interface; a card is unobtrusive and its usage is much faster and less exclusive of the patient; you can use it facing the patient. On top of which , it is not prone to crashes and outages!

This all made good sense – but unfortunately is not going to last: the doc told me he expects that the medical establishment (HMOs, hospitals, insurers, etc) will soon force all physicians to use their mandated computer tools, and that will be that. Come to think of it, if they took the extra step to port their software to the iPad, which is almost as flat as a card, we may have the best of both worlds!

What would Socrates think of Google?

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on December 8, 2011
in Analysis and Opinion
. 1 Comment

I was discussing with a college student I’ve been advising whether it was a good or a bad thing that Google makes access to answers so easy. To my surprise, she opined that it’s a bad thing – because people who use Google to answer a question are more likely to forget the answer they find, whereas if they have to think the problem through and discover the answer for themselves they will remember it in the long term.

An interesting insight from a Gen Y. But what struck me as remarkable was the fact that this is not a new argument; I’ve seen it before – in Plato’s dialog Phaedrus (written ca. 370 BC), where Socrates tells an Egyptian legend wherein the god Thoth invents Writing and presents in to the Pharaoh as a gift. This, says Thoth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories and more wisdom. The king replies:

“… this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves … they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing … they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality”.  [Source]

Looks like my student was of the same view as Socrates! And she may have a point – some of the methods young people use today to compile class assignments can be disturbing, to say the least. On the other hand, in the hand of a smart and conscientious student Google is a powerful tool indeed, and I think that its shortcomings are handsomely offset by its benefits, notably access to unprecedented quantities of knowledge. Besides, with all respect to Socrates, Writing has been around for millennia and nobody seems to complain…

But as the clincher, I must disclose that I did remember reading somewhere about the Thoth story, but I had to Google it to get the details for this post. Score one for Google!

Do not Disturb variation

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on November 17, 2011
in Analysis and Opinion
. 0 Comments

I’ve written before about various methods of ensuring freedom from interruption in the office; but pre-dating these there was the familiar “Do not Disturb” sign you hang on a hotel room door knob. These used to come in different colors, but they kept pretty much to the same form dictated by their function. A cardboard rectangle with hole… what was there to improve?

Well, on my recent trip to Berlin I saw what someone felt is the next great leap in interruption-busters. The NH Hotel we stayed in had a switch inside the room that would light an electric sign outside it. No more messing with cardboard.

This looks like an improvement… except for one minor detail: it would be all too easy to forget the sign ON when you leave the room, thereby preventing the staff from making your room up in your absence. The old system did not share this drawback – when you shut the door the dangling sign would be sure to catch you eye.

Seems to me that this idea could be made to work better if opening the door would switch the sign off automatically… But then, I am not a Hotel Systems consultant, am I?

Do Not Disturb switch in NH Hotel

Can’t they read?! – Take 2

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on November 7, 2011
in Analysis and Opinion
. 0 Comments

I’ve pointed out that people don’t read the emails they’re replying to… and here is one more common manifestation of this: when you send someone an email asking two or three questions, you can be almost certain the reply will only address the first one. The recipient reads your mail, hits a question, responds to it and moves to another message. Then you need to write them another message to get the other items addressed (and create more overload for both parties).

This being the universal case, there are steps you can take to defend against this tendency (besides sending each query in a separate email, which is the common and failsafe solution but exacerbates the IO problem).

  • You can give the message a subject line like “THREE questions for you”.
  • You can start the message with a statement of the number of queries.
  • You can put each question in a separate paragraph, prefixed with “Question 1”, “Question 2”, etc.
  • You can do all of the above.

Of course, you can do none of these and hope for the best… but I wouldn’t advise it!

Bye bye, E!

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on October 12, 2011
in Analysis and Opinion
. 0 Comments

The letter “e” has become a central symbol of the internet age, along with the once obscure “@” glyph. We have it prefixed to all sorts of old words, from Commerce to Bay, from Business to Book… and of course, to Mail, giving us what remains possibly the most  useful online tool yet devised: email.

But things change, and the venerable “e” is beginning to slip. I notice that more and more young people drop the “e” and just say “mail”  without even realizing the ambiguity this introduces – their generation’s experience with paper-in-envelope mail is so scanty that they are quite unconscious of it.

Wonder which e-word will morph next?

How ignorance can lead to Information Overload

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on September 13, 2011
in Analysis and Opinion
. 0 Comments

I was discussing Email Overload with a friend of mine who is a veteran manager at an international hi-tech company, and he made an interesting observation. His company, he said, is large enough that many email senders have no idea who should be copied on their messages; they can’t be sure who “needs to know”, so they just CC everyone who is remotely likely to be involved. Basically, they are replacing “Need to Know” with “Might possibly need to know”.

Of course, although these folks think “better safe than sorry”, they should be very sorry – the recipients that don’t need the information are wasting time, effort and peace of mind on the useless mail they receive. They are, in effect, paying with overload for the senders’ ignorance of their actual work needs.

So what can one do? You can’t make the company smaller; but you might ensure people have access to a better mapping of coworkers’ needs and interests. With today’s Social Media platforms, this mapping is much more accessible than before. Another reason to adopt social media in the enterprise!

The innocence of youth

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on September 4, 2011
in Analysis and Opinion
. 1 Comment

I was having coffee with a colleague I go back a long way with, and he told me of his first encounter with email. He had just joined Intel (in Israel) in 1988, and his boss showed him his new cubicle, his desk, and his computer, on which he demonstrated the email application. My friend came from a workplace where there was no such thing, and the following conversation ensued, more or less:

My friend: What is this for?

His boss: well, if you want to write something to someone, you write it in this window, add the person’s name on this line, and hit Send!

Friend: Oh, will I be supposed to communicate with people in the USA in performing my job?

Boss: Well, not necessarily. You can use it to communicate with people right here in our plant.

Friend: But they’re all here in this same office space, why on earth would I be sending them this email when I can talk to them?

Today, when coworkers send each other email from one cubicle to the next, this exchange would be unthinkable, yet my friend’s instinctive response is so sensible. It made me think: now it takes a serious effort to deploy a “No Email Day” program to get people to talk to each other again, but maybe back then the email addiction could have been stopped?

Ah, the innocence of youth…

Now, Facebook has its medals!

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on August 15, 2011
in Analysis and Opinion and Off-topic
. 0 Comments

One common response to mention of Facebook among the Gen X and Baby Boomer (in other words, over 30) crowd is the disdainful “Why would I want people to know what I had for breakfast?!”  Use of Facebook, these people declare, is shallow and silly.

Now, it is true that many people – and not just youngsters – post to their Facebook stream rather unimportant  snippets from their daily routine; and their Friends on the service can ignore it or react to it with equally inane comments. But that’s hardly unique to Facebook; people getting together in a bar or a pub seldom pronounce earth-shaking insights either. So what’s the problem?

Which reminds me of that wonderful hobby of my youth, Amateur radio. Of course that was also about Geekdom, and homebrewing complex electronic gear; but it also involved sitting up late nights pounding at a Morse key to set up contact with like-minded “hams” from remote lands. And you know what? With few exceptions, what we discussed was our locations, antennas, weather conditions and quality of reception. Even more boring than what we had for breakfast. Yet no one criticized us as shallow or silly!

Why not? Perhaps because we had our medals, so to speak: everyone knew that radio hams were an indispensable asset to their community at times of crisis or natural disaster. Everyone knew of some ship or mountaineering expedition that was saved through a diligent amateur operator’s efforts. True, these cases were rare, but they earned our hobby respect.

And now, at last, Facebook is earning its own medals as a beneficial force in society. In the past year Facebook is increasingly seen to impact the affairs of nations; most visibly in the “Arab spring” revolutions in the Islamic world, but also in less violent situations. In Israel it is being used by the current grassroots protest movements seeking to restore sanity to food prices, increase housing availability, and revise the national priorities to focus on greater social equality and justice. Non-violent as they are, they already have a huge impact; and they all began as a call for protest in a Facebook page started by a young individual. A month later, the government is trembling in the face of the hugest demonstrations the nation has ever seen, and much hopeful change is in the air.

So… next time someone tells you that Facebook is about what one ate for breakfast, remind them that it has earned its medals, and the right to talk about breakfast if it wishes – in between overthrowing tyrants and channeling nationwide protests. Saving sinking ships is nothing in comparison!