In This Edition:
1. Technology Bites Back
2. No Interest, or Never Recieved?
3. The Lack of Message Is the Medium
4. On the Lighter Side
April showers bring may flowers or so it is said. In the Triangle, here in North Carolina, accolades are showering down on the UNC basketball team for their highly convincing championship run.
Technology Bites Back
While my assistant was dutifully correcting contact information in my
database, unbeknownst to me or her, someone inadvertently hit an email
address with the left mouse button of a particular record. An email
receiving window opened up, and all of the email that I normally would have
received on my computer instead was downloaded to my assistant's computer.
In other words, one small mistake made and two to a 102 emails that should
have come to me, can quickly become misdirected. It doesn't sound like much
of a problem until you understand that the misdirection happens in a
nano-second. When I finally figured out this strange and undesirable
anomaly, I discovered to my dismay that emails I had received, as many as
four weeks ago, were sitting on my assistant's computer. People had replied
to me following my query, or people had sent me some new information that
simply sat there for days or weeks.
No Interest, or Never Recieved?
Usually when you send an email to another person and don't receive a reply
for days or weeks, you conclude that that person is not interested in
corresponding with you, and let the matter go. In my case, dozens of people
were interested in corresponding with me, and I let the matter go because I
had no idea they had ever answered me. When I understood the full impact of
this onerous software glitch I sat at my desk with my head in my hands. Who
else, I wondered, was expecting a reply from me and never heard back because
I assumed I had never heard back from them?
A larger question arose, how else is technology preventing each of us from
effectively communicating with others? What instant messages and cell phone
calls and other transmissions go this way instead of that way, and we never
know what has actually transpired? For me, finding out that my database was
usurping my emails was my own personal Y2K technology disaster. One week
later, I replaced the old-conceived software with a new contact-management
program, which has no feature that can even remotely usurp your email or
anything else you don't want it to do.
In recognition of the potential for mis-communication and misunderstanding I
now send a follow up email a day or two later to everyone from whom I have
not received a reply. Hello? Or something else to let the other person know
that I have not received a reply from them. In many cases I am again
ignored, but enough times I receive a reply from someone that lets me know
they had replied earlier. I then send them back a message saying, "Thanks. I
am so glad you got in touch with me for a second time. I didn't receive or
was otherwise unaware of your response."
The Lack of Message Is the Medium
As email has become the default form of communication. During the business
day I wonder how many times across America and throughout the world
technological glitches end up causing people to believe that they have been
ignored, or their idea lacked merit, or the other person did not want to
correspond with them. Such a sad state of affairs.
Boy meets girl. Boy sends email message to girl. Girl responds
affirmatively, but boy never receives the message. All too often this spells
the end of what might have been a budding relationship. Business
professional sends out proposal. Prospect responds to proposal and is
enthusiastic about proceeding. Business professional never receives response
and assumes the worst. However, being a business professional, he or she
will resend, thus upping the probability that an effective connection will
actually be made.
I have learned my lesson the hard way. I am going to take all precautions,
from here on in, to ensure that a party with whom I wish to correspond knows
that I wish to correspond, and I am going to take all precautions to ensure
that I receive whatever responses they sent back to me. How can one perceive
any other way?
On the Lighter Side
I was at a conference listening to the introducer for another speaker. He said, "I've know Bob since 1996. Before that, Bob was unknown." Everyone in the audience laughed, including Bob. It is so rare when you encounter an introducer who truly primes the audience for the speaker.
