INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS
Volume XI, Number
Copyright 2004 Chenault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
By Barry J. Moltz
Last
year, I wrote a column that many people told me they enjoyed headlined “This is
Barry Moltz Returning Your Phone Call”.
It ranted about why many people who we already know in business don’t
routinely return calls or e-mails. For a
month after I wrote this column, I received more returned phone calls than any
time since I worked for IBM.
This
experience made me think of how many times I receive e-mails in business on
subjects where people should actually be calling me instead of sending me an
e-mail. This may range from sensitive
personnel issues to financial matters.
When this happens to me, I pick up the phone and call the person to
clarify and further discuss these issues instead of hitting the reply button on
my computer.
It
is infinitely more productive and brings about a quicker resolution to dealing
with any issue head on instead of endlessly guessing what the person “meant” in
e-mail. No matter how well we write or
use emotions, words alone still are unable to identify the full range of our
meaning when we send a typed message to another person.
E-mail
is a “productivity tool” that has made us lazy once again. We depend far too heavily on it for things it
was never meant to do. Instead of dealing directly with a person on the issue,
our lack of courage, energy or time makes us use e-mail to shield ourselves
from talking with them or encountering anything uncomfortable.
I
have seen people e-mail a colleague who is in the cubicle next to them instead
of getting up from their desk and talking to that person. I have been copied on long arguments through
e-mail where absolutely nothing gets accomplished.
Don’t
get me wrong. There are definite times
and places for e-mail. It is effective
for arranging future meetings, keeping clients informed through newsletters and
documenting certain situations. It does eliminate the telephone tag game. In business, though, nothing can replace
picking up the phone and calling the person you need to get your message to or
setting up a specific time for a telephone conference call.
Video
conferencing has never replaced us getting on airplanes for meeting people in
person. It never will because there is
still something about talking to people in person and not on the phone. E-mail versus phone calls is similar. So when do you call and when do you e-mail a
person in business?
Mollie
Cole, senior consultant at Schindler Communications, tells me that the choice
on what form of communication to use is very much like the choice between
boxers and briefs. She recommends that
the businessperson first think about what their goal is and how serious they
are about achieving it.
Todd
Smart of BeTuitive reinforces this question.
He said: “If you choose e-mail because your recipient doesn’t know how
to have a conversation under 15 minutes and your e-mail will take two minutes,
that’s appropriate,” he said. “If you are choosing e-mail because you are
avoiding confrontation, you should be calling or speaking in person.”
Smart
tells his clients that e-mail is a great way to disseminate information. He added: “We use it for client newsletters
with great results.”
Cole
examines the choice in a business development context. She said: “E-mail is
often a very passive form of communication and it does not put the sender at
any particular advantage over the competitors. While well crafted, your e-mail
is no different than the 20 or 30 e-mails your contact might receive over a
24-hour period.”
Cole
suggests that you always “phone first” even if it is a follow up from a
previous meeting. She believes that
phone call gives you the opportunity to evaluate your business prospect or
customer so the next communication is appropriate with more impact. She says the combination of e-mail and phone
calls reinforce each other and form the best opportunity for the relationship
to grow.
In
the end, balance e-mail and phone calls.
Remember that your clients will also have a preferred form of
communication. If you need to talk to
someone now on an important issue, why not pick up the phone and call? They are
probably just sitting at their desk right now sending e-mail.
Barry
J. Moltz has been running small businesses with a great deal of success and
failure for 15 years. He co-founded
Prairie Angels (www.prairieangels.org), which invests in local seed stage
companies. Barry also is on the Advisory
Board of the Angel Capital Association, which is the national professional
alliance of angel groups. His book, “You
Need to Be A Little Crazy: The Truth about Starting and Growing Your Business”
describes the crazy ups and downs and emotional trials of running a
business. The book invites readers to
fully experience the personal journey and to let go of myths and expectations
that can hamstring them. He can be found
atwww.barrymoltz.com
During client
meetings and speaking engagements, we are often asked to translate technical
sentences and phrases into plain English.
There are many words and phrases, such as “paradigm shift”,
“best-of-breed”, “traction”, and “seamless” that are overused and therefore
become tiresome and meaningless. Writers
and speakers in our industry could be more creative with vocabulary and use
plain English. The following excerpts,
along with our translation, came from various information technology firm web
sites:
Technical
jargon:
Commerce Server 2002 is the comprehensive
.NET Enterprise Server for rapidly building highly scalable and reliable global
online business solutions, with granularity, that will optimize customer and
partner interaction.
Business
translation:
Build systems so your customers can order
your products over the Internet, which will increase your sales and save labor
costs.
Technical
jargon:
As services-oriented development of
applications emerges, pressures will merge to fundamentally reshape application
development (AD) and how to deliver software functionality. AD tool vendors will face a true paradigm
shift; legacy application portfolios will be radically reshuffled; entirely new
roles and procedures will emerge around requirements, reuse and quality; and
business modeling and rules engines will gain prominence.
Business translation:
Using the
latest software development tools, build systems based on what you already
have.
Technical
jargon:
The foundation for effective operations is
a robust enterprise resource planning application that can provide a truly
integrated, end-to-end (supplier-to-customer) e-business applications
architecture. With this in mind, we have
partnered with XYZ Software as our preferred ERP provider.
Business
translation:
We represent the XYZ Software product and,
to increase sales, we will try to use it to fit every possibility we can think
of.
Technical
jargon:
Successful e-businesses of the future will be those who treat e-business
as the collection of processes, which allow multiple companies to work
cooperatively and collaboratively to produce a seemingly seamless integration
of businesses operating as a virtually vertical enterprise.
Business translation:
If people use the
Internet to connect each other and enter transactions, they will save time and
money from not re-keying the same data over and over again.
Achieving Competitive Advantage
One of
our main purposes in business is to give our clients a competitive advantage
through software development. In other
words, with applications such as e-commerce, customer relationship management,
and integrated supply chain systems, the better the fit, the more competitive
the company becomes.
Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP) vendors, such as SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft, provide an off-the-shelf
answer for standard accounting, payroll, and manufacturing. A typical ERP system can give you an 80%
solution. You must still implement the
remaining 20% to fit your enterprise needs.
In the end, you can pay more for customizing this last 20% than for the
entire ERP application. In addition, if
every company uses the same standard ERP product, how can they strike a
point-of-difference and achieve competitive advantage?
The big consulting houses, with
their “strategic alliances” with ERP vendors, do very well helping companies
customize their ERP software. However,
is this in the best interest of the client?
Is the large consulting firm really objective? True consultants are not aligned with any
software vendor.
As far we are
concerned, with systems such as e-commerce, you need a fresh look with
objectivity. Web-based electronic
business requires a strong corporate identity you will not obtain from an
off-the-shelf package. To compete
effectively, you must create custom-built systems using the best development
tools and experienced people. This is
what we have learned from our clients.
“Everyone thinks of changing the world,
but no one thinks of changing himself.” -- Leo Tolstoy
“Government's
view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” --
Ronald Reagan
“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences.
That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way.” –
Mark Twain, A letter to D. W. Bowser.