The Big But

Effective business communication is equal parts art and science. When used as a conjunction, “but” has the magical power of invalidating whatever clause preceeded it. Consider these two examples that I received recently: “I don’t want to force the issue on this, but I would hate to have us both miss an opportunity to have …

Social business design in local crisis management

The Australian reports “Facebook the first stop for Queensland Police in floods.” At first glance, there’s little reason why the Queensland Police Service’s traditional modes of communication needed social media. But when you look closely, the structural issues become evident: People. “We were putting out information rather than responding to requests for information.” Culture and …

Is email social media?

Facebook is social. Twitter is social. Discussion and message boards are social. But more people would say that email is not. Gartner makes two important distinctions as to why email isn’t social media: E-mail is a distribution mechanism and social media is a collective mechanism Mass communication is different from mass collaboration Email isn’t social …

Email: option vs. obligation

When you receive an email message, do you believe that you have an option regarding whether to respond or not? Or do you have an obligation to take action? At Dachis Group’s Social Business Summit 2011 in London, Stuart McRae from IBM had this to say: “sending an email does not obligate the recipient to …

Why do we care so deeply about the inbox?

You encounter plenty of unsolicited communication in your life. Unexpected outreach takes many different forms and a combination of manual and automated defense mechanisms protect us from having to engage when we don’t want to. Think about these different modes of contact: In public, in person. If you’ve ever walked down the strip in Las Vegas, …