The Light at the End?

Some good news for business school students, according to this article in The New York Times. The recession may not be over, but things may be looking up for you all. Read the article here.

-Pete

Sign of the Times

Working with students on their ITEC projects brought to mind a client I had a number of years ago. I was the lowest account staff member of a public relations team of about five, and there was a lot of excitement about this new client. They were two genius brothers, one the brains and one the salesman, and they had a novel technology ready to unleash. They specialized in digital signatures. I asked the second lowest person on the team what a digital signature was.

He explained that a digital signature, or at least how our client conceived of one, was an authoritative electronic stamp that could legally and authentically prove that a document was signed on such and such a date, or that a document was reviewed by whichever parties had claimed to have reviewed it. This was in 2001. It was around the same time a Forbes article was being passed around the office, which declared that the worst job one could have during the tech bust was that of a PR account executive for a tech company. This was my job.

Looking the company up now, I can’t find them. I don’t think they remained clients of my firm’s for very long—their funding, along with others, dried up. And I didn’t remain with the firm very long either after the bust—eventually, nearly all of the technology account staff got laid off, except for the people who happen to be working with a walkie-talkie company. Evidently, someone always needs walkie-talkies.

What went wrong with the digital signature company? Were they not unique enough? Were they not marketable? Could they not implement it effectively? After visiting with students and sitting in ITEC classes at AU, I’m asking questions now that I didn’t ask then.

Get To The Point

When asked how long he spent preparing for a speech, Theodore Roosevelt once replied: “For a five minute speech, I need at least two weeks. For a ten minute speech, I need a week. For an hour-long speech, I’m ready now.” While this may seem counter-intuitive, Roosevelt was making the point that one of the most difficult parts of communication is condensing one’s message.

Most of us don’t have the Bull Moose’s talent in communication, but many of us struggle with the same challenge. We often become attached to our words, and find it difficult to identify the most important parts and eliminate the fluff. I find this is especially true in my written communications. For school assignments, my problem is usually writing too much rather than not enough. I promise myself that I will limit my blog entries to 300-400 words, but I usually exceed this self-imposed limit and have to cut my entries down. Twitter makes this even more challenging; I find it extremely frustrating to condense a complex thought to 140 characters.

For blog entries or emails, I’ve found that one good way to eliminate fluff is to write my main idea as though it were a Twitter update (i.e. no more than 140 characters), then go through my document and eliminate things that don’t fit with this main idea. While this may sound overly simplistic – and in some cases it is – it helps me stay focused on the topic. I wouldn’t recommend relying solely on this method to condense a school assignment, but I’ve found I can often cut 10-20% of my text using this method.

Another effective technique is to have someone else look over your paper. I find that it is usually easier for someone else to spot the unnecessary points in my writing, because they aren’t as emotionally invested in what I’ve written as I am. Similarly, I find it much easier to help others eliminate the fluff from their papers than to eliminate it from my own.

We’d be glad to help you with this at the Center for Business Communications. Come see us some time.

-Jon

Model United Nations & Negotiation Skills

While my experience in Toastmasters at AU has been extremely helpful in improving my speaking skills, it is not my first foray into communications. When I was an undergraduate at Wright State University in Ohio, I participated in another great organization: Model United Nations. In many ways, it helped me learn to communicate long before I had ever heard of Toastmasters.

Model UN is an organization where each person represents a country to solve an international problem. Each delegate addresses the entire committee to make the case for his country’s policies, then negotiates with the other countries until a policy agreement can be reached.

I enjoyed this organization because it taught me one of the most valuable skills in business communications: The art of negotiation and diplomacy. This is especially difficult when the person with whom you are negotiating may not have the same goals in mind. My favorite topics to address were international security issues, precisely because they were the most contentious and most likely to spark intense negotiations among the delegates.

In many other situations, good negotiation skills can result in major successes that may not have been possible otherwise. I found that one of the most important elements of negotiation is the one that people seem to forget the most often: respect. People are much more likely to compromise if they feel that you understand their point of view and respect their goals. While respect may not always be enough to resolve complex differences, it goes a long way. The business world is governed by a different set of priorities than international politics, but this rule applies to both. While this may seem obvious, I have seen this rule of negotiation broken more than any other during my time in Model UN. The results are predictable. As soon as you view your negotiation partners as opponents to be defeated instead of potentially valuable allies, they are much more likely to dig in their heels and refuse to compromise. When instead you start from a view of mutual respect and cooperation, you are much more likely to get more of what you want.

-Jon

Mathematics of Spam

My computer scientist and mathematician friend Brian Hayes has been tracking his spam for years and writing about it from a mathematical standpoint. His most recent blog on the topic (reporting on Chris Kranich et al's experiment) makes one question the cost-effectiveness of spam:

"The bottom line: 28 “sales” (no money actually changed hands, and no products were delivered) with an average purchase price of about $100. This is a conversion rate of less than 1 in 10 million, which leaves some doubt about the profitability of the operation."

--though, of course, as Brian points out, "the mere continued existence of spam argues that the actual costs must be much lower."

Brian also issues an interesting challenge to those who spam while using the "comment" feature--wonder if he'll get any takers?

Any Kogod marketing students out there who are studying spam?

But For Whom?

The Winter 2010 issue of The American Scholar includes a talk that William Zinsser gave to an incoming class of international students in Columbia University’s graduate journalism school. In it, he outlines four principles that he thinks makes for good writing: clarity, simplicity, brevity, and humanity.

Some of you may have read Zinsser’s book, On Writing Well, in undergraduate or even high school classes. It’s one of the most popular writing guides, and for good reason.

His advice is great, and for most of us it applies. One arena that seems to be an exception, however, is academia. If you’ve ever read a scholarly article, you know what I’m talking about. Part of this has to do with trade language. I once got into a debate with a political scientist over the need for the use of the word “ontological.” I thought it was jargon. She felt it was the best and only word she had to talk about metaphysics.

This is the gap Zinsser doesn’t address in the article: audience. In other words, to what extent should our audience dictate how we speak and write? Alternatively, should we be telling our audience how to read and write through practice?

Zinsser might argue simplicity above all. A PhD candidate setting down to write her dissertation about the Politics of God might argue something quite different. I’d love to hear what you think.

-Pete

Digital Nation

PBS ran a documentary on Frontline called “Digital Nation,” that explores how technology is changing the way we communicate...not always for the better. Although we’ve had the internet for nearly 20 years and cell phones for 10, it’s only been in the last year or two that our technology has become an all-encompassing platform for communication. This trend shows no sign of stopping, meaning we will probably spend evermore time immersed in technology instead of interacting directly with people in the next decade. Wouldn’t it be ironic if all of our new gadgets and programs, touted as a way to revolutionize the way we communicate with each other, ended up impeding our ability to communicate face-to-face?

The usual suspects – Facebook and Twitter – are notorious for facilitating procrastination among college students, but what is mentioned less often is that they may actually be reducing our “face-time” with the people we care about. For example, I broadcast the details of my life on these platforms far more often than I actually discuss them with people in real life. Some people even consider it a social faux pas to bring up a topic in real life that they read on a friend or colleague’s Facebook feed. I sometimes wonder if we would be better conversationalists if we didn’t have the ability to instantly broadcast any thought that enters our heads to hundreds of people.

On the other hand, our programs and smartphones enable us to keep in touch with people who would otherwise fall off our radar screens, and to share our ideas with strangers who would otherwise know nothing about us. They allow us to communicate more easily with colleagues from across the globe, reducing the need to live geographically near our workplace. And of course, they offer us incredibly diverse perspectives into world events that would not be possible by merely talking to our real-life acquaintances.

Clearly technology is a mixed bag when it comes to communication. Personally, I think the positive aspects are overwhelmingly more important than the negative. What do you think?

Watch Digital Nation if you have time. It’s very interesting.

-Jon