|
Email (In)Effectiveness
It's hard to remember the days before email, although they weren't that long ago. In many organizations, universal
email has only emerged in the last 10 years. So it's perhaps not surprising that we're still working the kinks out of it.
First of all, you need to learn the basic rules of email etiquette. Power users may also take advantage of emoticons,
to provide the electronic equivalent of "smiling when you say that." Apart from etiquette and style, though, is the fact that some kinds of transaction just don't transfer well to this medium.
Using email to carry some messages is risky at best.
In one of its first meaty pieces on Knowledge Management (way back in 1997), Gartner Group included a graph to compare the importance of
"Shared Presence" vs "Shared Data" in collaboration systems. That is, when is it important to look the other party in the eye, and when is it OK to read the memo? That's what's at the
heart of this issue. Some things travel fine on the asynchronous, generally neutral quality email. Others need face-to-face communication, preferably live.
Things you can do well with email
include transferring documents, offering congratulations, informing people about actions that don't effect them personally, getting answers to specific questions and setting up meetings with people you
know. Things you can't do well include resolving conflicts, getting buy-in to new programs, soliciting honest opinions, informing people about changes that do effect them personally and setting up
meetings with people you don't know.
The primary vectors here are emotion and change. If you have something to say that's likely to draw an emotional response, say it in person. Ditto if you're
trying to introduce a new order of things. If you want to read more about this, consider the Effective Email Guide from David Skyrme Associates. Or for a more poetic commentary, consider Hai E-Maili Paianes, by K Street's own Bill Bly.
Sarbanes-Oxley & Knowledge Management
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (a.k.a., Sarbox) is much in the news lately;
it's the cover story in the current issue of CIO magazine.
If you've just tuned in, Sarbox is the post-Enron legislation
that introduced stringent new rules to protect investors by "improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures." It also set several deadlines, and most large companies will be
required to meet reporting and certification mandates for financial statements filed after November 15, 2004. Smaller and foreign companies get until July 15, 2005. Companies don't just need to sign off
on the numbers, they need to be able to open their books and show how everything was added up.
The hope is that investors will be able to make better decisions if they know more about what's going
on. Not just investors either. It's really about "stakeholders," which includes a company's managers and employees. So Sarbox is a piece of Knowledge Management legislation too, or could be if
companies approach it in a certain way. It is certainly consistent with the idea that the open sharing of information leads to more effective business practices. Some companies have recognized the silver lining; HP, for one, is considering it as the core of a long term strategy.
From a KM perspective, it's one more step in the right
direction. If you'd like a good Sarbox resource, by the way, check out the Sarbanes-Oxley Act Community Forum.
Book Clubs as Communities
It seems most of the people we know either are now or have once been involved in a book club.
Book clubs are interesting structures, in that they take one of life's more solitary pursuits and turn it into a community activity. The act of reading removes you from your current time and
space, and the book club provides an opportunity to talk about where you've been. Reading is consistently the top leisure time activity for American adults, according to the Harris Poll, so a lot of people probably have a lot to talk about.
What's also interesting, though, is
that book clubs exist in both physical and virtual forms. There are lots of on-line resources to help you organize a book club, and there are also on-line book clubs that can give you some of that community feeling without ever leaving home. It's a positive lesson in community formation. People like doing things as a team -- you don't have to convince them it's a good idea, you just have to convince them they won't get hurt.
In fact, we know of some book clubs that have morphed into other kinds of social networks. That is, the group has held together, but shifted its socializing away from books and into something
else. That may be the most interesting part of all.
The K Street Book List
If January is the month for implementing New Year's resolutions, July is the month for
recommended reading lists. This may (or may not) become a K Street tradition, but we're offering the following for those interested. These aren't necessarily new books; they're just books we've found
worth reading, or reading again.
- A Prayer to Owen Meany by John Irving - a comic and heartfelt novel about an unusually tragic hero and his influence on the narrator, his best friend.
- Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - subtitled "instructions on writing and life," the book roughly follows the order in
which Lamott teaches her writing classes. The advice is so practical it can be applied to just about anything. Often very funny: "You want to make God laugh? Tell her your plans."
- Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon - published in 1982, this is a first-person account of a circular journey on the back roads of America, a mix of the author's insights and the stories of those he meets along the way. Worth reading more than once.
- Code by Lawrence Lessig - not a light read, but a fascinating (and sometimes disturbing) consideration of the ways that computer architectures determine the kind of place cyberspace will become, and the importance of citizen participation in the definition of same.
- Lila by Robert M. Pirsig - the sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, this book is framed by a sail down the Hudson River, a first-person narrative with characters and ideas that stay with you long after you finish the book.
- Naked by David Sedaris - Sedaris is brutally honest, a great storyteller, and often very, very funny in this memoir of his offbeat life and dysfunctional family. If you like this one, move on to Me
Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim.
- The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida - written in 2002, Florida combines story telling and research to examine the growing role of creativity in American society, something that’s changing people's choices and attitudes and having dramatic effects on local and regional economies.
- Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs - an autobiographical account of a boy who's raised by his mother's zany psychiatrist. Funny, harrowing and not for the easily offended.
- Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins -- Collins was named US Poet Laureate in 2000, and this is a great collection of his work. It includes poems from four earlier books as well as a clutch of new ones. Not many poems can make you laugh out loud, but you'll find some in here.
Unsubscribe | Change your profile
HOME | © COPYRIGHT 2008 KNOWLEDGE STREET LLC
|
