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

Personal Branding Makeover Winner of the Century...Al Gore? Plus: Why Nevada Made the Internet

As I am writing this post, this video (below) starring Bender of Futurama with Al Gore promoting Gore's new movie -- An Inconvenient Truth -- has been viewed ~800,000 times on YouTube. I bet it will surpass a million by Friday. It's hilarious.

Asides from the fact that Bender is in (my opinion) his better-than-the-Simpsons-near-perfect-post-modern-sarcastic-humorous form ripping on Al Gore is that Al Gore is a willing participant. And this, my friends, leads me to the primary purpose of this post:

Despite your political leanings (folks this ain't about R vs D which is too 1.0 for my taste anymore), if you look at what Al " I invented the Internet" Gore has accomplished and recovered from since his stoic Veep days, he has absolutely and without a doubt won my vote as the Personal Brand Makeover winner thus far this century. (I know...too soon to call and I won't be around to call it in 94 years!)

He's absolutely been a brilliant example of diligence and recovery. [Update: Shortly after I posted this I quite by accident stumbled on a wonderful story posted only a few moments a go by Renee Blodgett. Seems we're thinking real similar tonite!]

[Side note: Unfortunately I predict that too many folks who will read this post will have their default (R) or (D) glasses on and it will distort the merit of this post and miss my point entirely. So if you think with your Partisan, click away now!]

While we all know Al Gore didn't invent the Internet, he sure knows how to use it to market himself! Releasing this video is brilliant. Self-depreciating humor is the #1 way to gain trust. Entertainment is the best form of maintaining attention. And surrounding the whole concept with a near perfect (almost wrote text book LOL!) Web 2.0 marketing initiative is brilliant. The Web site is great purely from an execution perspective.

One of the reasons I blog is this Web 2.0 initiated environment of "connecting" with people by being honest, forthcoming and personal. As a CEO of a business, a 1.0 attitude would be for me to take excruciating pains to build a personal brand that is perhaps "not who I am" by diverting people's attention from "the real me" and building an alter-ego.

Today, however, I am quite comfortable being a CEO that leverages his personal blog to publish my honest and forthright dialog (uncensored by my PR agency) in the public blogoshpere and display proudly my affinity for cheap beer, fat skis and thin expensive Tablet PCs. The 1.0 expectation of old is that I would minimally fake a rant and rave about my wine cellar, Lexus or my golf game! In fact, I prefer to rant and rave about a lot of very non 1.0 CEO things like publicly adoration and prioritizations of my family over my business (shudder!) and even go as far as to admit to playing hooky on a powder day!

But that's really better left for another post on personal branding in the 2.0...back to Al Gore:

It's unfortunate that the R's get branded as being environmentally unfriendly all the time and that the D's are by default all tree hugging hippies. I certainly hope that Al Gore rises above the typical (and expected) R vs. D slam-fest cycle and keeps this dialog above "partisan politics". I don't think that the R vs. D debates of old will survive the online social communities of the 2.0 world. R vs. D is a very "binary" dialog and ultimately a dead end. The reality is that the world is very gray and that the MySpace Generation may be the first generation to become adept at Fuzzy Thinking.

I often joke that " Nevada made the Internet". The fact is that 87% of the US's gold production comes from here and pretty much every mineral necessary or essential to make a motherboard, cell phone, router, laptop or PDA comes out of the ground here. Demonizing the mining industry for supporting the demands of the technology industry is -- and always has been -- lame.

Nevada is a mining state and we unfortunately bear the burden of being depicted as an "environmentally unfriendly state" because of that. Making the Internet is a mineral and natural resources intensive business and if you're reading this then you owe a bit of thanks to Nevada.

Mining IS dirty. 'Them 'thar minerals are in the dirt. But my recent experience is that nothing could be further from the truth at this point with regards to the motivations of the mining industry. I don't think that there isn't a mining company in this state that isn't eyeballing the opportunities to participate in the alternative energies/fuels/resources business in some fashion. In fact, I bet more-than-our-fair-share of investment capital and federal incentives ( Reid/ Ensign) raised/appropriated on alternative energies, fuels and resources ends up being directed here to-wards the "Silver State". In other words, there's gold in 'them 'thar hills and it's in the form of Al Gore driven demand for keeping this planet alive and healthy and the Adam Smith-loving investors seeking returns on their dollars. (I liken the Biodieselmania to the Moonshine economy of the Prohibition.)

Here's my prediction: from a state branding perspective, expect Nevada to emerge over the next five years as the the most environmentally relevant state in the nation! As long as the mining companies don't think like Amtrak and think more like Microsoft we'll see some interesting innovation soon...

Your thoughts?

Technorati : Al Gore, An+Inconvenient+Truth, entertainment, humor, movies, personal branding, youtube
Del.icio.us : Al Gore, An+Inconvenient+Truth, entertainment, humor, movies, personal branding, youtube

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.

A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person.

A wonderful article in USA Today on how CEOs look at how others treat waiters as a guage of character. This is true. And we all know it. I've made many mental notes on people based on this.

Growing up at a ski resort where Texans flush with oil money came to town by the hundreds taught me this lesson early in life. Working in my parent's ski shops getting mistreated by folks every night made quite an impression on me.

The article talks about Swanson's Rules. This is the first time I've heard of these but they are awesome. I see people blowing #18 every day in my email Inbox.

SWANSON'S UNWRITTEN RULES

1: Learn to say, "I don't know." If used when appropriate, it will be used often.
2: It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.
3: If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much
4: Look for what is missing. Many know how to improve what's there; few can see what isn't there.
5: Presentation rule: When something appears on a slide presentation, assume the world knows about it and deal with it accordingly.
6. Work for a boss to whom you can tell it like it is. Remember, you can't pick your family, but you can pick your boss.
7: Constantly review developments to make sure that the actual benefits are what they were supposed to be. Avoid Newton's Law.
8: However menial and trivial your early assignments may appear, give them your best effort.
9: Persistence or tenacity is the disposition to persevere in spite of difficulties, discouragement or indifference. Don't be known as a good starter but a poor finisher!
10: In doing your project, don't wait for others; go after them and make sure it gets done.
11: Confirm the instructions you give others, and their commitments, in writing. Don't assume it will get done.
12: Don't be timid: Speak up, express yourself and promote your ideas.
13: Practice shows that those who speak the most knowingly and confidently often end up with the assignment to get the job done.
14: Strive for brevity and clarity in oral and written reports.
15: Be extremely careful in the accuracy of your statements.
16: Don't overlook the fact that you are working for a boss. Keep him or her informed. Whatever the boss wants, within the bounds of integrity, takes top priority.
17: Promises, schedules and estimates are important instruments in a well-run business. You must make promises — don't lean on the often-used phrase: "I can't estimate it because it depends on many uncertain factors."
18: Never direct a complaint to the top; a serious offense is to "cc" a person's boss on a copy of a complaint before the person has a chance to respond to the complaint.
19: When interacting with people outside the company, remember that you are always representing the company. Be especially careful of your commitments.
20: Cultivate the habit of boiling matters down to the simplest terms: the proverbial "elevator speech" is the best way.
21: Don't get excited in engineering emergencies: Keep your feet on the ground.
22: Cultivate the habit of making quick, clean-cut decisions.
23: When making decisions, the "pros" are much easier to deal with than the "cons." Your boss wants to see both.
24: Don't ever lose your sense of humor.
25: Have fun at what you do. It will be reflected in you work. No one likes a grump except another grump!
26: Treat the name of you company as if it were your own.
27: Beg for the bad news.
28: You remember 1/3 of what you read, 1/2 of what people tell you, but 100% of what you feel.
29: You can't polish a sneaker.
30: When facing issues or problems that are becoming drawn-out, "short them to the ground."
31: When faced with decisions, try to look at them as if you were one level up in the organization. Your perspective will change quickly.
32: A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person. (This rule never fails).
33: Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, an amateur built an ark that survived a flood while a large group of professionals built the Titanic!
Postscript: The qualities of leadership boil down to confidence, dedication, integrity and love.

Verizon sues telemarketers

The carriers tend to get beat up a lot. Sometimes deservingly so, other times they're the easiest target:

• "I ran out of gas, dammit Sprint!"
• "This whole Iraq thing - clearly a standards battle between CDMA and GSM."
• "The neighbor's dog -- I think his name is Cingular -- just crapped on my lawn."

So when a carrier does something really Really REALLY right, it should be recognized. Please recognize Verizon today for suing two spamming telemarketers (article on San Jose Mercury News) and reinforcing a message that spammers are not welcome on any communications channel:

Verizon Wireless filed a lawsuit Wednesday against a San Diego-based telemarketer that allegedly sent unsolicited recorded calls to more than 1 million California cell-phone customers this summer.

&

Verizon filed a second similar lawsuit Wednesday against Coral Springs, Fla.-based Resort Marketing Trends, also seeking an injunction. The suit alleges that the company made an estimated 280,000 unsolicited calls since July to Verizon cell phone customers, mainly in New Jersey.

Last year, if you recall, Verizon sued 51 individuals it said exploited the Verizon network to send millions of unsolicited text messages.

Thank you Verizon. Good job.

Quitting mainstream media...

As of this week I am no longer a regularly featured columnist in the local Reno Gazette Journal. In other words, I'm quitting my only mainstream media ('MSM') affiliation.

My purpose for writing a local column was weighted and distributed as follows:

• 50% to attract new and qualified talented employees while avoiding costly recruiting fees
• 30% local brand awareness for our products/services
• 20% experimentation with MSM and see what type of reaction I would get

As expected, ninety percent of the dialogue that came back to me was from rather strange folks that had either a conspiracy theory or decided that I would be a willing ear to vent on or both. I also received a tremendous amount of "charity spam".

For that reason I am running back to the shelter of blogging and will turn my attention to thinking about podcasts and what effect they will have on marketing communications, messaging and how it rocks the concepts of corporate control!

Cell Phone Use on Planes: The pros and cons

Today's WaPost pointed out the other side of allowing cell phone use in airplanes:

"People who don't hesitate to talk in restaurants or other taboo venues will take their disrespectful attitudes with them to the skies and turn a once-quiet place of refuge into a noisy, office-like environment to the detriment of all," Archambault said. "Overuse of the devices, loud talkers and self-important businessmen who get a kick from showing off their power will turn our airplane cabins into intolerable chatterboxes, further removing, and perhaps eliminating, all the remaining vestiges of civility in air travel."

I don't necessarily disagree. I see bad mobile manners all the time. Earlier this year, a lady at a nice restaurant screamed at me when I politely asked her to take her mobile conversation elsewhere as my wife and I couldn't hear each other talk. (She got kicked out, I got dinner comped, and half the patrons in the restaurant applauded.) If in-flight wireless use on an airplane was limited to SMS/text messaging, mobile e-mail and other wireless applications, everyone would still be able to communicate QUIETLY!

Once the cabin doors are closed, voice calls should be terminated, but you should be allowed to use wireless connectivity or SMS until your fingers bleed.

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Understanding GOST

For the longest time I thought everyone was taught GOST in biz school. Every day now I am reminded that this is not true. It's sad and it contributes to so many misaligned priorities.

GOST stands for Goals, Objectives, Strategies and Tactics. It's a specific order, much like Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. Furthermore, there's specific constraints and relationships between the order. A Goal is typically singular, while Objectives are mean to measure progress to achieving a Goal. Strategies support a specific Objective, and Tactics are the minutia of merit in executing a Strategy.

I remember when I first learned GOST in business school and our homework was to write a mini-strategic plan using GOST. My friend, in his usual frat-boy twist on things, decided to plan out  his desire to get laid (Goal) with all the Objectives, Strategies and Tactics necessary to do this. Not only was it hilarious watching him have to give a presentation on this in front of the class, it created an indelible image of the structure in my mind. Proclivity to unsnapping a brastrap with one hand was most definitely a Tactic not to be confused with an Objetive or Strategy.

I explain it so many times to employees and customers that I have a simple example that I give out now:

Goals > Objectives > Strategies > Tactics

GOST for short

A Goal is measured by Objectives
Objectives, if met, ensure Goal is achieved
Strategies are methods/efforts enlisted to meet Objectives
Tactics are explicitly applied experience/expertise/execution/application to Strategies.

Goal: Run and finish the Boston Marathon in February
  Objective 1: Qualify for the Marathon
    Strategy 1: Compete in November LA Qualifier, if unsuccessful see Strategy 2
      Tactic: My training partner will be in LA, running with her is productive
      Tactic: LA is at Sea Level. My training in Reno is at altitude. Better chance
  Strategy 2: Compete in December Reno Qualifier
     Tactic: Learn from mistakes in LA, revise training plan
     Tactic: Train on this course for familiarity
     Tactic: More friends for support
  Objective 2: Save $1,875 for trips to Boston, LA
    Strategy: Stop eating out for 3 months, save $1,000
      Tactic: Train when I typically would desire to eat out
    Strategy: Reduce month's entertainment budget by $100.00, save it
      Tactic: More training means less time to spend $$ on entertainment
  Objective 3: Implement training program designed by Ross
    Strategy: Meet with Ross (personal trainer) every 2 weeks to assess progress
    Strategy: Convince Ross to train with me at least twice a month.

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Clear Communication: Catch their attention with purposeful writing

Every communication has a purpose. The purpose of this post is to share my thoughts on why purpose is paramount and how to bring clarity to the purpose in a communication. Furthermore, it is important to be wary of common mistakes that render communications purposeless, or worse, obscured to the point that any intended purpose is not easily discerned.

Let me restate that:
1. The purpose of a communication must be immediate and clear to the composer and the recipient.
2. Too often we unintentionally confuse the purpose, fail to address purpose, or simply have no purpose yet feel compelled to communicate nevertheless.
3. Often it is necessary to state a purpose one way, then re-state it in another way to ensure clarity.

Immediate & Clear
Sometimes there may be more than one purpose in composing a communication. Often, a single communication may contain so many purposes that you should stop composition immediately and focus on prioritization and linear order to be more articulate.

If the composer doesn't truly understand the purpose of his or her communication, surely the recipient will be incrementally lost. And even if the composer is clear on his or her purpose, yet fails in immediately making that clear to the recipient, again the communication is rendered ineffective.

Organized and Linear
An exercise I recall vividly from 8th grade was to state the purpose of a letter, and then note the purpose of each paragraph, and then note the purpose of each sentence, and then note the purpose of certain word selections. In many ways, this is the equivalent of Goals, Objectives, Strategies and Tactics from writing style. (e.g. The purpose of this paragraph was to demonstrate that I have been keen on writing with purpose from an early age and that it is not too different from the strategic planning model of GOST).

Best Practices
While I can't submit that I am that extreme in most communications I write, at the very minimum, I write a purpose statement at the beginning to set the "goal" of the communication. If there are more than one purposes involved, I will organize them in to objectives and strategies and then come back to flesh in the words, making certain vocabulary selections for tactical effect. (e.g. I used "vocabulary selections" over "word selections" because it implies intelligence and tactics as opposed to "words" which mean nothing.) 

I find this to be effective in bringing the clarity required for an effective communication that elicits the response or conveys the opinion I am trying to compose.

Summary
Most of the time, purpose is implicit. "Can you pick me up at seven?" Often, however, when it comes down to making a point, opening a door, changing a perception, or frankly having things go your way, a clear, organized purpose must be present or your communication will fail. Worse, you brand yourself as disorganized, unpurposeful and confusing. I actually dread receiving e-mail from some individuals because I know that I'll have to re-read their e-mail ten times before I understand what the hell they want! Or they bury it in the last sentence.

Simply put, start your meaningful communications with the following sentence structure and you'll be off to better days:

"The purpose of this communication is to..."

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How to Turn an Useless E-mail Argument into a Productive Communication

Never pick a fight or argue by an e-mail among fellow executives or peers. I'm constantly amazed at how many e-mails are sent to me to start or promote an argument with little regard to harmony and consensus. E-mail can be used effectively -- albeit very selectively -- to start and finish an argument, but it must be a subject that can be handled in 500 words or less: 5 paragraphs, no paragraph longer than 5 sentences.

If you have a problem with a policy or procedure within a company, e-mail is the vehicle perhaps to gain the attention, forum or insight in how to address the issue.

Bad:

"I have issues with the policy. I think that if you adopt the policy we're going to face huge problems. I think where the plan is wrong is....Furthermore, I believe....You need to...."

Good:

"The purpose of this e-mail is to call to your attention some potential risks the company may face with the proposed policy. While I know it has been reviewed and is generally thought to be acceptable, the definition of secure should again come under scrutiny. My intent is to determine with your assistance the best means to address this quickly and efficiently without having to shift any current priorities.

Background
In reviewing the proposed policy, I have some new perspective on the exempt classification, more importantly, how to avoid some probable disputes in the future. I reviewed this with Bob and he shares the same concern. While I know we've reviewed this already, this new perspective only came to mind with a recent situation. My worst fear is that it may result in legal action taken against the company if we are not thorough.

Recommendation
I believe the issues to be too complex to facilitate by e-mail. I'd love to have a quick 15-minute conversation and enlist your guidance on how best to broach and remedy this situation with the fellow managers."

The "Bad" method is confrontational. It immediately creates an A/not-A situation. It's personal even though most often it is not meant to be. Mistakenly, people often use threat and hyperbolized risk thinking it will win the argument, but only cements in the mind of the reader that the sender is crying wolf, not a team player, not focused on the big picture, meddlesome. Worse, the e-mail gets mentally marked as a "problem" and gets put in to the "crap I have to deal with" folder. Typically everyone and their twice-removed cousin is copied on the e-mail to "force" a response, which further pisses off the recipient.

The "Good" method again speaks to the basic lessons in written communication:

1. State the purpose.
2. Provide background and/or establish credible perspective.
3. Propse solutions with pros/cons, or if it requires more than 60 seconds of thought, seek forum. Underscore your objectivity. An increase in perceived subjectivity is a decrease in ease of resolution.
4. Seek permission to raise the issue with peers, subordinates, or executives. Understand your bounds.
5. Above all, establish a common goal. Seek to remove you and the recipient from the A/not-A and place yourself in a perspective of analysis. Objective v. subjective. Establish that others share your concern without CC'ng a damn soul.

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Bad E-mail Habits Observed

Communicating the right way via e-mail and other modes of communication is important. Unfortunately, the ease of use of e-mail is leading to some common and frequent bad habits. Here’s some “names” I’ve coined for the most prevalent bad habits I observe in my Inbox:

1. Firestarting. A person receives an e-mail that makes them panic, or that is too complicated for them to deal with alone. Since it's so darn easy to throw a dozen people into a forward, CC, or reply a lot of people end up getting involved at that instant and increasing the panic and confusion rather than solving the issue. By the time all the threads get uncrossed, more time has been spent in disjointed crossfire than on solving the issue.
2. Crossfire Info-bombing. This one is a personal pet peeve and follows LaPlante’s Rule of Inbound v. Outbound: The amount of e-mail you can respond to effectively is inversely proportionate to the amount of e-mail you receive. I particularly suffer from this as I get CC'd on everything. As an executive, everyone wants to call everything to your attention. They think that by throwing your name on a CC that the TO: recipient will be that much more compelled to respond, and when they do, they CC me as well. Furthermore, while we think that everyone can read and absorb all of the e-mail they receive, the reality is that it is not possible for all. The detriment is that due to crossfire info-bombing, I get to spend less time absorbing and intelligently responding to important e-mails. Instead, I have to try and skim all the mail I receive and figure out if it really is relevant for me to absorb and/or if I need to respond.
3. Ticking bombs. Often I find e-mails lurking in my inbox that should have been a call to my cell phone immediately. It's akin to sending me an e-mail letting me know that you’re currently witnessing my car being stolen out front. Which brings me to…
4. Problem bouncing. E-mail comes to a person. However, that particular person does not feel like dealing with it right then. Instead of picking up a phone, walking down the hall, organizing a meeting, or whatever, they forward the e-mail on to someone else to deal with it.
5. Bottom-threaders. This is more of a personal annoyance. However, many people choose to respond to an e-mail at the bottom of the original e-mail. This is counterintuitive and mixes up the recent-down (a.k.a. current-at-top) approach that 99 percent of the world follows. I miss responses all the time because they're buried in the thread out of recent-down order. What’s worse, when you mix the two together and you have no idea where the thread is or was. Drives me nuts!

Golden Rule applies: Communicate to others how you wish to be communicated with: Quickly, efficiently and with the relevance, intelligence and organization that minimizes the recipient's effort to understand it and deal with it appropriately.

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15 Minutes of SMS: How SMS makes traveler's lives easier

The wheels of the Boeing 777 on Delta flight 128 touch ground in Dublin, Ireland at 8:00 am GMT – midnight in Nevada. I wish for a Red Bull as I turn on my Nokia 6820 phone and wonder which U.K. wireless provider it will latch on to. Seconds after “Vodafone” appears on its smallish screen on top of a wallpaper of my two boys, my pulse quickens as messages start to beep in.

I’ve been unreachable for ten hours on a midweek business day. That’s an eternity. God knows what I’ve missed and what processes have been paralyzed in my trans-Atlantic absence.

I have seventeen text messages and three voice mails. Only three new voice mails! Woohoo! I’ll listen to those in the cab. Two years ago it would have been the opposite. I cringe as I recall the days of deciphering the babble of dozens of voice mails with all the commensurate filler:

“Hi, hope you’re well…weather’s been warm…let’s do lunch…read a good book on vacation…blah blah blah…”

What a pain it was to sift the information from the inarticulate banter, transcribe them to my iPaq while hoping I don’t dyslexia the call back numbers and prolong a week of international phone tag.

Before the plane reaches the gate I’ve scanned through the mobile text messages, otherwise known as SMS or TXTs. My heart-rate subsides as I note no real emergencies.

Any cell phone sold today supports SMS, or short-message-service. One hundred and sixty characters to ask a question, make a point, convey information, carry a conversation, take advantage of a promotion or sell something. In Europe, twenty billion fly through the air every month. The US is far behind but catching up quickly. Ask any parent of a teenager with monthly $60.00 text messaging bill for confirmation of that fact.

My company develops software around SMS automation, so I’ve been addicted since 1997. I’ve just bought the brand-new Nokia 6820 for its miniature flip-open keyboard. It’s a text-messaging machine. I’ll be able to crank through these seventeen TXTs before I deplane.

My CRM (customer relationship management system) has alerted me to four product demo requests from our Web site and I smile as I note that one is from a guy I met on the plane from Vegas to Atlanta about fifteen hours ago. He must have hit the Web site from the free WiFi access in the Jet Blue terminal as he waited to connect to JFK. Good – I won’t have to enter him as a lead. He did the work for me.

I forward it to the sales rep I know will be “rules-based assigned” that lead and provide details I learned over our plane-bound dinner of peanuts and pretzels. My company’s software will have already “personally replied” to this lead by e-mail and alerted the rep with an SMS including interaction stats to his cell phone by now.

One SMS from my CRM catches my eye. A $25,000 deal has reached Closed-Won. Yet another alerts me to an opportunity with a Stage-Age ratio out of whack. I forward the Closed-Won SMS to the rep who nailed it with kudos and a promise to call this client in the morning Seattle-time. I like how we configured the alerts to include the phone number and e-mail of the opportunity contact. Never mind that my sales rep back in San Jose is in bed and his phone just beeped. Hey, it’s a 24/7 world economy. He’ll dream of commissions and sleep happy knowing that I noticed.

I go back to the Stage/Age alert and forward it to the rep on that opportunity and politely remind her that I’m watching from the other side of the planet. “This deal is important,” I SMS. “TXT me if U need me 2 help move it along.”

My controller SMS’d me wondering if I will authorize a large wire to a vendor in Canada. I reply, “No. Wait ‘till Friday.” Then I see his earlier SMS noting the cash receipts for the day. I send him another SMS rescinding the “No” to a “Yes, good job.”

I confirm three conference calls and make the appropriate calendar item adjustments in my iPaq as I re-orient my brain and my iPaq clock settings to Greenwich Mean Time. I read the last few:

• The Brewers’ reliever Ben Ford gave up the historic 661st homer of Bonds' career and the Giants won 4-2.
• The hotel I am staying at SMS’d me their address and concierge desk phone number while welcoming me to Dublin. I’ll save the directions for the cabby.

The people in front of me start to deplane and I thumb a few more “Yes” and No” responses. Seventeen SMS’ dealt with. But before I stand up and let the blood clots loose reaching for my luggage, I thumb-type two final TXTs.

To my Irish partner in our Dublin office, I send: “Just landed. On way 2 hotel to shower/chng. Will catch cab 2 office. B there by 10a. Have 4 Red Bulls ready for me. L8r.”

And to my wife: “Just landed. Call me if still awake. Would’ve called but don’t want 2 wake boys. Luv/miss U.”

My phone beeps and it’s a TXT from my partner: “Out front. Blue Merc. Lane 6 behind police. CU soon” Cool. No cab ride. I can get Red Bull in to my body that much sooner. It’s going to be a long day…I still have 200 emails to go through and I suspect most won’t be 160 characters or less!

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Trying (or not really) to Reach Me

There's probably not a business day that goes by that I do not witness some act of poor strategy in communications as it pertains to people trying to reach me.

In the 10 minutes I had to deplane in Atlanta and run to catch my next plane, I called my office voicemail. There was a message left earlier that morning from a person desperate for me to call him back within the hour.

Had he listened to my voicemail greeting, they would have heard "Due to flight schedules, I will be unable to listen or return voicemail today. Please send me an e-mail, SMS or call my mobile phone number if urgent."

What's worse? They called and left a second voicemail two hours later! And they were upset that I had not called them back! Did they call my mobile phone? No. Did they send an e-mail? No. Did they send me an SMS? No. They assumed that despite what my greeting said, I would still call them back. Crazy.

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