News from Kriger Consulting

In our office yesterday we were discussing the shear volume of email we get on a daily basis. In the past two days I received over 385 emails, most of which were trying to sell me property in Tenn., options for having whiter teeth, or how to soup up my life. First of all I don't want to buy land right now, I like my teeth as they are, and my life is simmering along just fine. It is getting harder and harder to keep up with all of the communication on a daily basis and its impact on all of us is often unrealized.

Over the past year I have had several requests to work with organizations experiencing feelings of disconnection and increasing dissension within their organizations. We're hearing from all sectors, that most systems are impatient with others, have difficulty getting and providing information, have feelings of disconnect. Generally when we work with these organizations we find two things happening.

1. There is an over reliance on e-mail and electronic communication. E-mail is adequate in providing reports, statistics, making basic requests, or supplying fundamental information such as the time of the meeting or where something will occur. But it is extremely inefficient and ineffective in providing information that requires any context of understanding or emotion.

It's very easy to overreact or appear to under react in an e-mail. You can tear someone up fairly easily at a distance, but face-to-face it is a very different interaction. Have you ever felt something, quickly wrote an e-mail, and sent it only to regret being so impulsive? Breakdowns are occurring all over the place because of the impersonal nature of electronic communication. The rapid interaction does not allow us time to think, censor ourselves, and take the context of the communication into consideration. There is no substitute for face-to-face communication, and we are beginning to see diminished ability to effectively communicate in a variety of settings.

To remedy this we often encourage individuals to increase the opportunities for face-to-face communication. In order of priority the first method of providing information is talking to others in person. Now I know this seems a novel concept, but it's something we often find lacking in many of the organizations we work with. The second most effective form of communication would be a phone call. I'm amazed at how many people are surprised when I call them rather than e-mail. And the last form of communication would be e-mail. I have to tell you that I actually received a request not too long ago from a company asking me to provide leadership development services, and the entire e-mail was sent in text messaging language!

2. Meetings are now being seen as an inconvenience. In some organization the majority of information is being disseminated electronically. We are actually encouraging organizations to meet more often, not less often. The objection here is often, "We just don't have the time!" The problem is if you don't take the time to meet regularly, larger problems will demand your time when you have even less time available. We now work with organizations that have daily staff meetings. However, these are not the traditional hour and 1/2 to 3 hour sessions. These organizations get together for 5 to 7 minutes each morning in their break room or in an office. Everyone gathers in a circle with a timer, knowing that they are there to touch base on important issues. If something is discovered in this brief meeting it is put on the agenda for the regular staff meeting which is held every week or every other week with the opportunity for more in-depth interaction.