The Art of Corporate Communications

I don't usually wax lyrical about corporate management or any sort of management spiel either. I am proud of the fact that I have never and will never read a management book, despite recognizing the infinite revenue capacities of the genre.

But after an enlightening conversation with an MBA friend yesterday about culture, accents, working in a large, matrixed organization - this morning I had an epiphany about... email.

Many management and communications guru wax lyrical about the evils of cold, heartless email. There are statistics about the number of (useless) emails we write and send every day, spam is condemned, email is condemned as spam. However, having struggled a little with accents across borders recently, I've come to realize that the best tool for working across borders may actually be... email.

Why? Email is an accentless, contextless medium. Despite the potential dangers of such a medium, the flipside to risk is always opportunities, and I can't help but see email as the most effective way for a corporate (read: cold) management (read: antisocial) person to get things done.

1. Know your kitchen. Many management communications articles focus on how remote management and the need for communications across borders due to globalization are hampered by a lack of context and the inability to build relationships across borders, especially in high context dependent cultures. Management comms articles who like to compartmentalize the human psyche focus on how we each have a "communication preference", hinting that you can tell the straightforward from the subtle in how they communicate over the phone - Jack the American blathing his needs over the phone to Yuki the Japanese nodding and silently disagreeing over the conference line. I don't believe any single person has a single communication preference. We pick, or should pick, our communication mediums and preferences based on what we want to achieve at any given time.
   
   So we know that subtlety is not email's strongest points. But then again, email isn't the only tool in the kitchen, and the recognition of the fact is communications' biggest win. Use email to get things done; and phone/webcam and face to face meetings focused on building relationships. In a conference call among many parties, build relationships over the phone and summarize action items in an email following up the call.
   
2. Exploit the blank. Blank isn't always cold and contextless. While over the phone we usually know why we have come together for a discussion, email starts off blank, without a purpose. Exploit the fact that email is without context and emotion to set the tone and purpose of the communication. State your intentions at the beginning of the email, outline key messages by prefacing the purpose of the communication.
   
3. Summary = Clarity. I learnt this trick by accident along the way. Use your advantage in good email management to benefit groups and individuals who don't. How many threads have you come across that warble and ramble across several weeks and individuals? Pull those together in a clear summary to all involved, and you will be remembered as the essential person bringing clarity and efficacy to a situation. By making brevity your best friend, you maximize the chances of your email being read, and minimize the spam-delete instinct that many of us develop these days.
   
4. Think before you speak. Master the art of drafting. I've learnt at several points in my life that email saves you from blurting, and gives you a last opportunity to retract your words before they are spoken. Several tools allow you to do that: Keep emails in your Outbox instead of sending them automatically. This allows you to review your email one last time before hitting the ultimate send button. Save important emails as Drafts, take the time to work on them, it's worthwhile. Put yourself on CC. Most people don't notice emails that they send, but take notice of emails that are sent to them. Copying yourself on key communications allows you not only a point of reference in the future, but builds in that self-criticality that is often missing from blurt-sending.