Is Technology Blocking Your Message? (Issue 20, Vol 04)

I’m writing this edition of CDCD on board an aeroplane, heading to a foreign country, where I have several meetings to attend.

The business pages of today’s paper claim the airlines are facing a squeeze, with the whole industry expected to make a net profit of $4 billion this year – less than half of their previous forecast issued a mere four months ago.

This rising fuel costs are blamed, along with a lower volume of price-sensitive, leisure passengers. The volume of high-margin, forward cabin passengers continues to grow (albeit at a lower rate).

So what?

Well something is getting business passengers back into aeroplanes – me included – so what is it? Why in these days of reliable, high capacity, high-performance networks, supporting simultaneous e-mail, phone calls, online chat, video conferencing and streaming would we bother with something as old-fashioned, quaint and expensive as face-to-face meetings?

This is the answer is: because they work. And what’s more, they do so much better than the alternatives.

I’m all for technology, after all I worked in high-tech industries for more than 20 years. However, we can let ourselves get carried away by technical solutions to what are, essentially, human issues.

Our need to communicate is one of the basics, back there with food and shelter. As interpersonal communication has developed over the years it’s been helped along by many inventions, for example, the printing press, camera, typewriter and word processor, to name but a few.

Each of these technical innovations simultaneously propelled the ability to communicate forwards while knocking the quality of communication backwards into the Stone Age. For example, carousel projectors gave speakers the ability to illustrate their otherwise dry, boring lectures with real colour images (hooray); but the bulbs were so feeble they had to be used in near blackout conditions, with the result that we all went to sleep anyway. Carousel projectors didn’t fix the problem of dry, boring lecturers.

The same thing happened with word processors. Suddenly everybody had a typewriter on their desk. Great. Shame that the secretaries were sacked, as not only were they the only people who knew how to use the new machines, but they were the only people who knew the rules of grammar, how to lay out a letter and how to spell. The number of documents in circulation increased while their overall quality decreased.

So too with relatively newfangled technology, such as videoconferencing. Once the purview of executive boardrooms the capability now sits on everyone’s desk. As with word processors of the mid-1980s, volume has gone up and quality of communication has gone down. Can you honestly say that you’ve attended a really excellent, inspiring videoconference?

No, me neither.
The reason is because people have forgotten what makes a good communication. It isn’t space age technology. It is:

□ Having a useful, relevant message

□ Illustrating it with an engaging story

□ Delivering it with good eye contact and appropriate vocal inflection

You would think that videoconferencing would “work”, so far as eye contact is concerned – but the reality is far from that. People look at the screen image of the person they are talking to – not into the camera. The audience perceives that the speaker isn’t looking at them, and so switches off. Just as we had to relearn the rules of grammar, and how to lay out a letter, so it is the will have to relearn the essentials of good face-to-face communication.

which ever method you choose having Effective Communication skills when it comes to dealing with customers is essential.

And that’s why I’m writing this on an aeroplane.

This post was first published as one of Chris Davidson’s “Competitive Difference” emails. You can subscribe to Chris Davidson’s “Competitive Difference” (CDCD) Via the Active Presence website. You can also contact Active Presence directly.