Can You Hear Me

by Nick Morgan

  No waffling.

  Transparency. We demand greater and greater transparency from our colleagues, leaders, partners, and other associates. This demand has huge implications not only for internal documents but also for external missives to customers, external stakeholders, and the public. We must be prepared to write it like it is and find grace in that expression of openness.

  Empathy. All of us are expected to show greater understanding of, and greater sensitivity to, more and more perspectives than Chapter_06.indd 139

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  140 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels ever before. Being caught out with a lack of empathy for someone or some group can completely derail a text—and a career.

  Connection. Our readers expect more than just a text from us. When they follow up with questions, they expect a quick response, any time, day or night, weekdays or weekends.

  People expect to be able to connect with everyone today. All the time.

  Internalize these rules gracefully, and you’ll go a long way toward becoming the true voice of your era.

  Don’t say, “All employees using the company kitchen are responsible for taking care of the whole space, which means being considerate of all the other users, taking care of your own stuff, such as making sure that you throw out any expired food or leftovers that have been in the fridge more than a couple of days. It also means wiping down the counters, putting any and all dishes in the dishwasher, rinsing out coffee cups to control the waste and smell of old coffee grounds that employees have complained about, and removing and adequately sorting the recyclables from the nonrecyclable waste.”

  Do say, “Let’s all work together to keep the kitchen spotless.”

  A few basic rules can prevent email backfires A few final rules for successful text-based communications.

  Avoid sending out mass mailings. Too many of us get cc’ed and bcc’ed on endless all-team, all-unit, and all-company emails that someone was doing the CYA thing on and that we really don’t have to read. If something is important, send it as an individual message to each recipient.

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  Don’t say anything via email that you would be horrified to see online in a public forum. Email is not secure, as any number of executives in Hollywood, in the business world, and in politics can tell you, to their enormous chagrin.

  An email or text is not the best format for a vigorous discussion. If you want that, set up a meeting or a phone call.

  If you want a response to your email, make this point clear, and don’t send it to lots of recipients. If you want several people to comment on a document, say, then put it in a shared discussion folder with format control to avoid the nightmare of multiple versions.

  Don’t rant in emails, and don’t respond angrily to rants. Take a deep breath, and go see the person to talk it over if you know who the person is. If you don’t, then don’t respond at all.

  Should you be using something

  else besides email?

  The way we communicate in the modern office continues to evolve. Where once we had to walk down the hall or pick up the phone to talk to our colleagues, now we can quickly fire off an email from a desktop, laptop, or mobile device. Email is so easy to send, in fact, that it’s become a deluge. Step away from your desk for a moment, and you may get more emails than you can possibly respond to. As a result, many offices now also use chat programs like Google Hangouts (formerly Gchat) and Slack.

  Why Slack is so popular

  Slack started life as an internal collaboration tool for a team that was working on developing an online game. Its name derives Chapter_06.indd 141

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  142 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels from an acronym: searchable log of all conversation and knowledge.9 As the phrase implies, Slack is a team chat program that’s searchable, and it allows users to upload and share images, files, and snippets of code. You can tag a coworker to make sure the person sees an important comment. You can create specific channels for teams and subteams and can direct-message a specific user. Created for developers, the program is still particularly popular with them, but it has spread to many tech-savvy offices.

  One of those offices is Klick Health, a health marketing agency.10 The company of roughly seven hundred people uses Gmail-based email, Google Hangouts, and Slack. Employees say that Slack spread organically. “Slack did not come top down,” says Keith Liu, Klick’s senior vice president for products and innovation. The company does have an internal chat platform, but chats posted there are visible to the entire company, so the internal app is not used as much for day-to-day communication. “I treat it [the proprietary platform] very much like companywide email,” Liu says. It’s like replying all to seven hundred people, he says.

  Because Slack is an outside app, employees say that it feels more private even than Google Hangouts or email. Employees can install the Slack app on their phones without installing a device administrator (and giving their employer some control over their device) the way they would have to install something to use their corporate email on a personal device. Technically, managers have access to employees’ corporate email accounts, but not their Slack accounts. These privacy features help contribute to a sense that Slack is more casual and less formal than email.

  Most people also tend to get fewer notifications from Slack than they do from email, so it feels less burdensome. “The main benefit is the signal-to-noise ratio,” says Yan Fossat, Klick’s vice Chapter_06.indd 142

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  president of labs. “This morning, I had six thousand unread emails,” Fossat says. People know he’s more likely to see a Slack message because the volume is more manageable, he says.

  Of course, this lower volume does create an expectation that every Slack message will be read. The deluge of email can serve as a convenient excuse for missing or failing to respond to a message, but a similar excuse doesn’t seem to work for Slack, Klick employees say. “The problem with that is, it’s a timeline,” Liu says. If you step away from a group chat for a while, you may have to scroll back quite a way to catch up on everything. And if you don’t, you’re going to miss things. In a contentious situation, Slack can almost be “weaponized,” Liu says. “There’s no defense against” a colleague pointing out that the information was posted on Slack a week ago, Liu says. Even if you didn’t see the comment, the implication is that you should have.

  The expectation that everyone will stay up-to-date on a chat program like Slack may come in part from the fact that the app is, or can be, a real-time communication platform. Slack and other chat programs feel more immediate or urgent than email does, Klick employees say. It feels acceptable to wait a week to respond to an email, Fossat says, but a chat seems to demand an immediate response. For Fossat, Slack is somewhere between an email and a Google Hangouts session. He says he would respond to a text message or Google Hangouts message right away, a Slack message within a couple of hours, and an email within twenty-four hours or so.

  Slack and other chat programs seem to allow for richer communication than what email provides, Klick employees say.

  “Nobody would describe email as a messaging platform or as a collaboration tool,” Liu says. “Slack is a collaboration tool.”

  That’s one reason developers tend to like it so much. The chat app allows colleagues to share the files or code they’re working Chapter_06.indd 143

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  144 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels on, or share the ticket for a task, and continue to chat about how to approach the problem at hand. This capability helps make space for more problem solving than is possible in a medium like email, where only one person can “talk” at a time and where it’s easy to talk at cross-purposes if two or more people respond to the same
message at the same time with different ideas.

  Employees at Klick also say that it’s easier to get a sense of tone and personality in a chat program than it is over email. Everyone has that colleague who comes across as abrupt or even rude over email. “On channels like Slack and Gchat, their abruptness can come across, well, it’s like a dry humor,” Liu says. Something about the real-time immediacy of Slack or its organic spread and less official feel means that people tend to communicate less formally and more conversationally in chat. People are also much more likely to share gifs or memes in chat programs than with email, Klick employees say.

  It’s also more acceptable to cut to the chase in chat. Perhaps because you’re in and out of the program all day, it’s socially acceptable to dispense with the small talk, whereas in an email, people still feel obliged to include greetings and niceties like

  “Hope you’re well.” The brevity of chat, too, may help avoid miscommunication. “The less you say, the less likely it is that they will misunderstand,” Fossat says.

  Is chat a better way of handling

  conflict than email is?

  When conflict does arise on a team, the chat medium seems to make the conflict easier to manage. Email comes across as a more formal message. Particularly from a manager, a terse email carries a lot of weight, Liu says. “When I’m professionally angry,” he says, “I can be professionally angry on Gchat, Chapter_06.indd 144

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  and it’s conversational. But if I end up writing those same things in an email, that becomes a formal missive as opposed to ‘That really irked me.’” In a chat, irritation may feel more like a natural part of the ebb and flow of conversation; in an email, particularly from a manager, irritation may feel more like a formal reprimand.

  Klick teams tend to invite their clients into project-specific Slack channels once the teams have established a working relationship with a client. Establishing this type of communication with a client has numerous benefits, Klick employees say. For one thing, it’s transparent. Anyone in a Slack channel can see all comments, so “the client feels like you’re being more honest with them,” Liu says. Using Slack can also create a sense of exclusivity, where you and the client become part of an in group. “It actually is a closer relationship,” Liu says. “It allows for more serendipitous and closer communication.” Fossat agrees: “You feel closer by being less correct.”

  Several conclusions emerge from office experiences like Klick’s. First of all, the differences between one kind of writing program and another are probably not sufficient to justify the time and expense of switching and training an entire organization in the new software. Second, some kind of texting program to allow people to send out quick queries, comments, shout-outs, and notes to each other is probably essential in today’s fast-moving offices. And finally, training your organization to learn not to hit “copy all” every time an email is sent out would be good for business, morale, and efficiency. No one should be receiving six thousand emails a day.

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  146 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels Practical fixes

  The “What’s in it for me?” move

  To increase the impact and memorability of your communications, be they email or any other digital form, you can explicitly inform the audience what’s in it for them. Why and how, in short, this piece of information matters to them. Include this information as a one-sentence headline at the top of the communication.

  This technique was discovered by researchers trying to help memory-impaired people remember their daily lives better. In the digital world, we’re all a little memory impaired, so this practice of headlining the benefits of the information will help you and your team remember things better. Do it because it will work for you. The researchers called the technique “self-imagining,” which sounds a little ominous, but don’t let that put you off. It works.

  Emoji

  As I’ve encouraged you to do earlier, use emoji. Yes, they run the risk of seeming childish. But they do let the recipient know what you’re feeling. And that’s incredibly important—way more important than what you’re actually saying.

  The email cheat sheet

  Refer to these guidelines on a regular basis to keep your email writing clear, tight, and effective.

  1. Writing needs clarity, a point of view, a point, hierarchical thinking, and grace of expression.

  2. Write conversationally, and then revise.

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  3. Try to make the actor in the sentence the subject of it.

  4. Avoid passive constructions for the most part.

  5. Take out the fillers and qualifiers.

  6. Same with adjectives and adverbs.

  7. Start an email, a paragraph, and your sentences with the familiar, the old, the agreed-upon. Then move to the unfamiliar, the new, the debatable.

  8. Put the emphasis at the end of sentences and paragraphs when possible.

  9. What we humans care about fundamentally is each other’s intent. Make your intent clear.

  10. Find moments of passion—but don’t shout the whole time.

  11. Tell the receiver something he or she doesn’t know—but don’t tell the person everything you know.

  12. We only crave a little extra knowledge.

  13. Build suspense by starting a story or promising an insight and then delivering it later.

  14. Keep it real.

  15. Begin with a trigger, an emotional framing sentence, prompting the reader to want to do something.

  16. Then, go into some detail to show that you understand the reader’s world.

  17. Once the reader is prepared, then hit him or her with the new idea.

  18. Then help the reader understand the benefits of the idea.

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  148 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels 19. Close a written piece with the action you want to propose.

  20. Good writing has authenticity, consistency, transparency, empathy, and connection.

  CHAPTER SUMMARY

  • Don’t automate anything that should contain the personal touch.

  • Don’t email long communiqués at the last minute.

  • Don’t send emotional y laden emails or throw other virtual bombs when you’re in the heat of passion; wait until you cool down.

  • Establish a virtual message hierarchy, and agree with your team on the forms and frequency of your communications.

  • Address cultural differences directly; embrace difference.

  • Writing is hard; few of us do it well.

  • Our modern world requires all of us to become writers.

  • Writing needs clarity, a point of view, a clear idea, hierarchical thinking, and grace of expression.

  • Write conversationally, and then revise.

  • Good writing also has authenticity, consistency, transparency, empathy, and connection.

  • There are alternatives to email, but none of them relieve us of the burden of writing.

  • Companies that have added software like Slack find that employees have to write and read more, not less.

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  7.

  THE CONFERENCE CALL

  In all the lore of online business life, the stories of what your colleagues actually do when they’re on conference calls (instead of participating) are legion, lusty, and legend. Put on the mute button, and those virtual people go to real-life town. Partly it’s because conference calls are ubiquitous—the low-hanging, rot-ten fruit of the digital world. And partly it’s because they are so boring.

  Of course, there are tales of embarrassing rants and even more embarrassing noises. And I read recently of a man who was
fired for making an obscene gesture at the phone, not realizing that the video camera was on as he walked in to join the meeting.1

  But my favorite story—and the Golden Ear Award—belongs to the two people that experienced an earthquake while speaking (they were in different places)—and kept going on the call.2

  Probably because everyone was on mute and thus no one was actually there.

  Let’s look into what needs to happen to the audioconference to make it better.

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  150 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels Just because a technology exists

  is no reason to embrace it

  We begin with a taxonomy. There are, broadly speaking, three kinds of conference calls that merit independent dissection.

  First, there’s the public conference call. Your chief financial officer (CFO) might run such a call quarterly when he or she is updating the investor community about the company financials. The format on that one is for the CFO and possibly one or two other executives to speak from a prepared text of some sort for ten minutes or longer, followed by an open Q and A session for listeners to ask follow-up questions and kick the financial tires. Because these calls are public, they will be recorded, placed in an archive, saved, and forgotten. But their immediate results can be financially significant for the company or can even make national or international news if the company is routinely in the headlines. The stakes are thus high.

  I once worked with a chief executive whose voice was so jar-ring on the ear that every time he spoke at one of the quarterly conference calls, the stock price would go down a point or two.

  His voice literally cost the company millions. I’m delighted to tell you that we were able to improve his voice and help the company financials at the same time.

  Second, there are conference calls between organizations and their clients or customers, or between various members of a project team that has assembled for a specific period or to accomplish a specific task. It’s not a public call, but there are often contrac-tual agreements, sales situations, or other sorts of business issues at stake or being discussed. Here, embarrassing gaffes can have companywide implications if a sale fails because of someone’s mis-behavior, incompetence, or simple inability to deliver the goods.