David LaPlante

Confidentiality Notices are Annoying - Some better ways to let people know to keep it on the QT

You've seen them. Maybe you get only a few a day, I seem to get hundreds. Usually they come in the form of a one-sentence email from your attorney and a 300-1,000 word essay / legal briefing on confidentiality at the bottom. Below is a sooper-shorty one for example:

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE
The information contained in this e-mail correspondence is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is PRIVILEGED and CONFIDENTIAL. If you are not the named recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, duplication, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance upon this correspondence is strictly prohibited. If you received this correspondence in error, please notify the sender by phone, fax, or e-mail and destroy any and all copies of the correspondence. Thank you.

These are really annoying when you read most of your email on a cell phone. I think I've scrolled 10 miles thru these over the last year getting to the bottom of the thread.

Have you noticed they usually come from professionally anal people? Pretty much every attorney, accountants and HR professional I know has 200-1,000 words of fine print at the top, bottom and even embedded in the header. Especially email from those old men who smell like old spice and are always trying to recall one politician or another and love rambling on-and-on-and-on at public forums. They love appending their emails with all kinds of crazy stuff like this.

Here's a couple Nevada-specific idea for a Confidentiality Notice that I'd like to see/use in my email. Short and sweet. Probably just as effective. Liven things up a little:

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE
I live in Nevada. We have lots of abandoned mineshafts and ample room for shallow graves. Keep this email to yourself.

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE
Just like those photos of you I took in Vegas, what happens in your Inbox stays in your Inbox.

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE
Like I trust my .40, I trust you to keep email this to yourself. I have a Basque/Italian family, BTW.

What kind of Confidentiality Notices would you like to fly?

  Technorati : confidentiality, disclaimer, email, humor, legal, nevada, notice

Excellent article on why relationship messaging with email is a struggle

Daniel Enemark wrote an outstanding article on email and its challenges in relationship messaging. In "It's all about me: Why e-mails are so easily misunderstood", he highlights that researchers are consistently pointing to the difficulty of expressing and conveying emotion as the chief culprit in misunderstood or ineffective dialog. (This applies to any text-based communication. SMS is often worse. IM at least has embedded emoticons.)

I am particularly aware of this from experience within my own inbox and the experiences of customers as they struggle with using email effectively in their marketing. Read a post of mine from May 3, 2004 on Bad Email Habits Observed.

Effective use of email in relationships management is a science. This article and the researchers it cites corroborates why we -- Twelve Horses that is -- went from being an email-centric business in 2002 to a relationship marketing and messaging management company where email is one of multiple channels of communication. We simply couldn't ignore the fact that sometimes a follow-up phone call is what it took to make an effective email campaign convert at a higher rate.

The article cites this at the bottom of the story:

So if you want to buy something on Craig's List, Morris says, "make a brief phone call, even if it's not practical to do the whole negotiation by phone. You can establish a favorable bias with someone and then proceed in a less rich medium, but it's very hard to just get right into the negotiation on a medium that isn't rich."

Email is extremely effective when used at the right time (T), with the right relevance (R), delivered to the appropriate location (L) and used with permission (P). TRL+P is the formula for any communication.  As is any communication. The KEY is to recognize that it can't always be about email. Sometimes a phone call, a text message, a fax, a letter, or even in in-person meeting makes the difference.

My favorite quote out of the article:

Though e-mail is a powerful and convenient medium, researchers have identified three major problems. First and foremost, e-mail lacks cues like facial expression and tone of voice. That makes it difficult for recipients to decode meaning well. Second, the prospect of instantaneous communication creates an urgency that pressures e-mailers to think and write quickly, which can lead to carelessness. Finally, the inability to develop personal rapport over e-mail makes relationships fragile in the face of conflict.

Bingo. Could not have written it better. Here's a link to the study by Profs. Justin Kruger of New York University and Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago that the article cites.

On Executive Interviewing: Some Do's & Don'ts; A Few Reflections on Interviewing a Batch of Highly Successful Candidates

A short while back I had the unique and rewarding experience to participate in panel interviews to assist in the selection of a new CEO to head up a large public enterprise. Finalist candidates from all over the nation were brought in and plunked down in front of a bunch of us “community folk” and slow-roasted about until cooked medium-well.

It was interesting, amusing, maddening, informative, creative and above all – educational -- to say the least. Unfortunately I am bound by an NDA which prevents me from disclosing anything really juicy! [Side note on this process: Actually – there’s not much to tell despite what the mainstream media trying to sell papers may want you to believe. And despite what the hyperbole-mongrels of community conspiracy theory would have you believe, there isn’t anything going on behind closed doors other than giving some decent folks from out of town a little privacy, respect and comfort.]

Since I am a student of the “personal branding” and “relationship marketing”, I enjoyed dissecting relationship development under the stress of an executive interview. I managed to keep some notes in the margins of these interviews that are “general enough” that they should be of assistance to any executive in the hotseat interviewing for a leadership position:

1. Understand the rules and expectations of the “game”. Understand how much time you have for the interview and establish the goals of the interviewees. Only one candidate out the gate asked up front what I hoped to accomplish in the interview and that stood out positively.
2. Pay attention to the time. Take the time available and divide it in to 4 parts and query the interviewer “how am I doing, how’s the pace?” If given an hour, query at 15 minute intervals. Two reasons: One, this ensures that the pace is correct and that everyone will get to ask the questions that are most important to them. Second, this gives you an opportunity to get some feedback on how you’re doing. Forcing an interviewer to say, “You’re doing great!” reinforces that you are doing just that…great!
3. Answer in thirds. Give a 33% condensed and to the point answer. Solicit feedback on whether that covers it. If favorable, then proceed to embellish the answer with a STORY or EXPERIENCE for the next 33%. If the panel/interviewers are still interested in more, give additional perspective or dialog or extend to hypothetical situations you may encounter.
4. Tell stories. (Here we go again, David LaPlante wanting you to use stories!) Entertain. But know the moral of the story you tell. Anyone who knows me knows that I believe life is about making and telling stories. The best answers to questions are told from a story.
5. Be conversant. Be humble. Speak from EXPERIENCE not OPINION. OPINION = BAD: “I think this community should pave the parks!.” EXPERIENCE = GOOD: “It’s been my experience that when we paved our community park we enjoyed a substantial cost reduction lawn trimming services.”
6. Dress for success and don’t be afraid to stand out. But don’t go overboard. MEN: A loud pinstripe suit may be OK if it’s New York and you’re interviewing at Goldman Sachs. Once you get the job, the pinstripe is a good thing. Pinstripes have ego. This can be dangerous. Someone with a very strong and overpowering personality may actually want to choose for something more subtle. The opposite is true. Wear sharp solid suit and embellish it with bright colors in the short – not the tie. If you’re interviewing for a job that pays over $100,000 a year, you can afford to wear a suit made in the last freakin’ decade! In fact, it would be your best bet to buy a new suit.
7. Stage presence. Practice your stage presence.
8. Hedge your criticisms with your reasoning and explore the other alternatives. Example: “From the knowledge and experience I have, this is my observation. It’s not an effective campaign. However, I’ve been a leader long enough to know that in any organization with smart folks that my observation may not be drawn hastily. There’s reasoning for everything and usually more to the story than what meets the eye.”
9. Body language does not lie! Make frequent eye contact. Say people’s names. Get their attention and keep it. I kept chickenscratch notes on eye contact alone. My “strongest” candidate made eye contact with me almost 3x more than the second. The worst interviewee ranked only made eye contact 6 times. That’s only 10% of the “average”. Crazy yet amazing and true!
10. AND FOR GOD’S SAKE SMILE! 8-)

Do you have any items/thoughts to add? I’d really like to get a thread going on this one!

ContextPlus Shuts Down

Chalk up another victory for common sense and relationship marketing best practices. ContextPlus -- a company that positions itself as a "1:1 marketer" is shutting down amidst lawsuits and "lack of distribution partners". Seems that they're really an adware/spyware company. Here's a quote from the eWeek article:

"This is one of the most notorious companies out there. They're doing all kinds of nasty things on [hijacked] machines," said the source, who requested anonymity because on the ongoing nature of the investigations.

What's the lesson here: People do not like to have their privacy invaded without their permission in advance. The best relationships are based on honest and upfront dialog.