Doing everything right
One phone rule will save us all time
One simple cell phone etiquette rule will save us all many hours.
You will recognize the context:
Say you are driving north down Highway 101 from Palo Alto to San Francisco at about 3:00 PM on Friday afternoon. You dial your friend in New York and reach him as he is heading home to rest before going out to dinner. He’s on the E Train.
You are in the midst of an important discussion. And, then, just before he heads into Brooklyn Heights, he says “If I lose you going under the water, I’ll . . .” You hear silence, and, then, silence. . Gone! Lost connection, and who knows exactly what the last words were your friend heard?
You wait for about how long you know it takes for the E Train to resurface on the other side of the East River. Here, then, is the sequence of events that follow:
- You redial
- You hear a busy signal, and hang up
- You see a message waiting on your cell phone screen
- You are near certain it is from the friend you were just speaking with saying “tag, I’m trying to call you back,” so you redial again
- You think you are about to connect, but you hear the call waiting signal. You check your screen for the incoming number. Sure enough, it’s your friend calling you back again. You try to click over, but he’s already gone back to voice mail.
- You hit the red button several times to terminate any call left connected
- You wait for your friend to dial again, but nothing happens because now your friend is also waiting
- You are both probably frustrated by now. You hit the green button again to dial, but now all the cells on Highway 101 are clogged with people planning their Friday evenings. Your call takes several minutes to get through and now you can hear that your friend is on the line with someone else.
- “Forget it,” you think, “I’ll catch him tomorrow.”
Who should call back and who should hold off?
Here’s the etiquette:
Don’t spend time guessing or presuming whose phone or location was responsible for the lost connection. That’s impossible for either party to know.
Whoever initiates the call should dial back, regardless. It’s simple and straightforward. You’ll both always know who that is and you will avoid a lot of confusion and wasted dialing and waiting.
Taking emotion out of corporate email
How about a corporate policy mandating against emotional communication in email? Michael Keck recently informed me that this is the rule for internal communications over at Algentis.
Michael and team want to stay focused on serving their clients. They DO NOT want to waste time parsing email sentences to decipher any hidden meaning behind the written words.
The no subtext rule
Their solution is a no-subtext rule: Don’t write with emotion and don’t waste time looking for it. If a manager wants to know when he will receive an overdue deliverable, he will write, “when will you send that deliverable?” He will not spend time crafting a more tactful, but easily over analyzed, sentence like, “I just wanted to check in on when you’ll be able to get that deliverable to me, as I was under the impression you would send it to me yesterday.”
The policy probably won’t work with customers, and, even internally, it requires colleagues to adhere to the same principles that make a marriage work well: Assumption of goodwill, complete forgiveness for past disputes, etc.
Don’t read between the lines
If a manager writes to a colleague “when will you be arriving today?” the receiver of the message must avoid reading any innuendo into the simple question. The point is for the reader not to waste time thinking “I wonder if he thinks I’m late a lot.” The Algentis policy says such nuanced discussion will be left out of email and transmitted only in verbal communication, a form far less prone to misunderstanding.
Higher personal productivity is the benefit
I’m not sure if the tip is a good one for all teams. Operating among diverse groups may require a commitment to extra communication. But adherence to the no-subtext rule is probably helpful to any individual reaching for higher personal productivity. Imagine unilaterally telling coworkers that you’ll no longer spend time deciphering emails with emotion: The information only, please!
You may miss a bit of the meaning and connection. But spending less time reading between the lines may save enough mental energy to make it worth the tradeoff.
Finally a way to connect your laptop to the web via your BlackBerry
For two years I had a Verizon PC card to give me web access for my HP laptop. The card was free, but the service cost me about $60 per month—a big monthly cost. The connection was fast and the ability to connect from client locations was an important benefit. But the $60 per month ($720 per year) really irked me, so I ended up dropping the service.
Now I finally found a way to get the mobile web connection I want on my laptop without the high monthly fee. I recently download the Tether app for BlackBerry. For a one-time fee of $49.99 I can connect my BlackBerry to my HP laptop via a USB cable and get the web and email from almost anywhere. There is no additional fee beyond the BlackBerry data plan I already have from Verizon.
Not only do I save a bundle, but also I score a victory for competition with the big carriers.
What: Tether app for BlackBerry
Where: http://tether.com/
Price: Free trial available, full version is $49.95 one-time fee
“I know I should be delegating to save me time, but I am just too busy to figure it out.”
by Eric Taussig
I hear these words all the time from prospective Prialto members. They are some of my favorites to hear, because I know they come from the very type of person Prialto can best help.
Prialto has worked with more than 100 members who have successfully delegated thousands of tasks for us to do for them. Through this, we have learned critical best practices for using remote assistant services. This knowledge has become indispensible in guiding our new members to get up and running. A few examples:
- Communicate often, clearly, and consistently
Communication is your greatest ally in fostering any working relationship. It is even more critical when working remotely.It helps, for example, to set up a daily reminder call either at the beginning or at the end of the day. Just as you might make a daily practice of touching base with an in-office assistant, it is good practice to regularly check in with your Prialto assistant.
Your assistant should cover your daily to-do list to help you stay focused and on-task. Give your assistant honest and clear feedback on all the activities he or she helped you with in the last 24 hours.
And make these daily interactions by telephone, not email. Verbal conversation, our highest-bandwidth form of communication, lets you transmit the most amount of information efficiently.
- Focus first on delegating recurring tasks
Delegating recurring tasks is a powerful way to use your assistant. Once established, tasks get done with little or no additional effort on your part. Some powerful tasks our members have delegated are:- Every two weeks, compile competitor press releases and any changes to pricing/advertising
- Every third Wednesday, send a list of three restaurants with reviews and price ranges. (Should a member decide on a restaurant, the assistant makes the reservation and arranges the babysitter.)
- Twice a day, an assistant calls a hotline and retrieves any messages, transcribes the messages, and sends them to the member
True, software can perform many similar tasks, but our members routinely tell us that the human touch adds far more value. With humans, tasks get done with more nuance and in a way that saves time for our demanding members.
- Unload small tasks too
Even small tasks add up. If a task will take you 15 minutes, you may think to just do it yourself. But those small tasks add up. Four of those small tasks would take you an hour to complete, as opposed to four or five minutes spent assigning the task to your assistant. Here are some scenarios:- A prospect calls while you are driving. She wants you to send her your address via email immediately. You can call your assistant and have him or her send the information.
- You are on the phone with a client and realize that you need to invite someone to the sales meeting you just arranged. Call your assistant and have them handle the arrangements.
- You hear an advertisement on the radio. Call your assistant and ask them to send you the company’s information.
The relief of getting things done (not halfway done, not noted, or just added to your to-do list) liberates the soul. You fell better about your day, you feel more successful, and you are more relaxed.
- Build your relationship slowly to gain trust
Although we have trained our assistants to be ready for your most urgent tasks, you may still hesitate to hand off work. That is natural during the get-to-know-you phase. Take your time to build a working relationship with your assistant; otherwise, those first few tasks may create a lot of anxiety for you. Begin with smaller, easy-to-accomplish assignments and a simple to-do list that you want to do but just can’t seem to make time for.
An assistant may accomplish one-off tasks for you, but can they do so much more. They can completely remove tasks from your routine for good, they provide reassurance, and they remove the stress from life.
Eric Taussig is Prialto’s CEO
How social media can work for business, part 2
by Peter Pincetl
Social media—and how to use it. In Part 2 we present five whitepapers that provide more details on what that exactly means.
- A Primer in Social Media by Eric Karjaluoto (smashLAB, March 2008)
A strong introduction to social media with examples of successful and unsuccessful uses and suggestions on how to apply them to your own company. Includes an extensive bibliography. - The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications by Josh Gordon (socialmediatoday)
First social media was used for general business communication. But now uses are shifting towards consumer engagement. Survey data confirms the trend. And applications of Twitter and social networking are outlined later in the article. - Social Media: The Case for Online Engagement (dna13 Inc., 2009)
(Requires free registration) Social media is a powerful tool for reputation management. Case studies of McDonald’s, MasterCard, and JetBlue demonstrate how each has used this tool successfully. Social media lets your company reach a large audience at low costs and a unified company message. - Social Networking: An Age Neutral Commodity by Dick Shroud (October 2007)
Social networking is relevant to all age groups and consumer types . Here you will read about the fundamentals, a history, and why social networking is now so prominent. The author concludes with some speculation on where social networking is going and how marketers should use it. - Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Michael A. Stelzner (March 2009)
A comprehensive study on how marketers are using social media to grow and promote their businesses. It is stuffed with data and graphs to make sense of recent trends and answer questions.
Peter Pincetl is the Prialto 2009 Social Media Intern.