My Morning WalkNew day, uninterrupted thoughts

A great lesson learned from a couple of 13-year-old kids:  “Don’t waste my time.”  In talking with my daughter the other evening, I learned a fascinating bit of insight as to why she’d rather text than talk on the phone.  (Yes, you read it correctly.)  She said she would rather get to the point than listen to the other person “ho-hum around” trying to figure out what to say and creating long, uncomfortable pauses in the conversation.  She said it’s easier to just type what she is thinking (self-edited) and hit “send”.  Think about it…how busy are students today?  They have more balls in the air than a juggler in Cirque de Soleil.  So why has social media gotten a bad rap (until recently) in the business world?  It’s been seen as a waste of time, not as a business tool for improving efficiency. 

Imagine if you could make service 5 times more productive and you could sell 3 times as many widgets, all while improving your customers’ experiences.  How would this change your world?  It’s possible.  But what needs to happen first is that more people embrace this technology.  It’s not going away.  Perhaps we should even change the business category of the platforms of Twitter, Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn and blogging from “Social Media” to “On-Point Media” just to change the perception of what they are useful for.  Why?  As I learned from my 13-year-old, we have no time to waste…even on pauses, breathing, or thinking.  “On-point media” conveys that message.  When people we interact with think through their situations, questions, thoughts and problems on their own before contacting someone to help them, both parties’ time is actually used more effectively. 

Are there any times this wouldn’t work?

Do you ever get a voice mail with no message except “Call me”?  The person who gets this message is essentially walking into a dark room where there could be (a) a dozen roses, or (b) 4 people with baseball bats waiting to take their head off.  The person responding to the call is forced to enter into a battle of wits unarmed.  Admittedly this seems a bit unrealistic, but the service industry is known for having days filled with difficult questions.  Why can’t the person returning the call at least be prepared for the interaction?

So, how does one get their point across?  A very good way is e-mail.  It forces you to think about the problem and how to communicate it before you press “send”.  If the phone is the preferred method, the discussion tends to be improvisational unless the call is scripted in advance.  This then wastes 10 minutes on a 1-minute point.  By using e-mail, both parties also have a record of the question and the response so a printed copy is available if the response was forgotten in 6 months.

Technologies like Skype make it possible to shrink the world.  Many people used to prefer to deal with the “neighborhood shop” or to drive to the bank to make their deposits.  Today, direct deposit, online accounts, e-mail and video conferencing with webcams can put someone in “virtually” the same room as anyone, anywhere, any time. 

So why does it matter where an office is located anymore?  Is it still necessary to be “where the action is” or is it possible to have relationships with clients a world away?  There are certainly differing opinions about this across the business spectrum.  But really, how much does it matter that the person you know and trust isn’t physically around the corner when their “virtual office” is only a foot away from your face?  With the costs of doing business on the rise, why not make the most of the technology we are constantly being introduced to?  You may actually have more time and money to share with the people that matter most to you if you just embraced the change.