FROM ESCARGOTS TO NEW E-FANGLEDNESSES

As we said before, everyone’s got a solution for the trials and tribulations of email.

Personal assistants (robot-icized).  Internal social media divided by work groups.  Automatic softwares that sort email by sender, topic, urgency, and other categories.  New rules, from meeting protocol (turn off those $!%@!# laptops and smartphones) to days away from the app.   And new behaviors about cc’ing or replying to all and eschewing large attachments, like photos.

It’s clear that something needs to be done about our 122+ individual daily emails – and 100+ billion sent every 24 hours.

Or does it? 

How much, really, would each of us accomplish in a day without our e-crutches?  [You have to admit that the e-newbies like Yammer and HipChat, Convo and Slack are just organized, social forms of our online work communications.  They’re the latest forms of Sharepoint, where groups review and comment on documents and requirements and project management to-dos.]

Proponents of these group-wares cite transparency, the ease of exchange, the convenience of knowing that everyone who needs to be in the know is.  Then again, detractors point to the silo-ing of corporate America and the tendency to ‘say anything’ in small collaborations, regardless of whether the boss is watching.

So in addition to resorting to snail mail from time to time (our most recent remedy), it’s entirely possible that we call on the change gurus to, well, talk about new behaviors.  Such as leaders who’ve figured out how to work/not with email the best ways.  Role models demonstrating collaboration in non e-ways.  And a rewards system (in words or dollars) to motivate all.

Technology isn’t always our friend.

A NEW-FASHIONED CANDY STORE

Announcements of new mobile and Web-like tools come almost daily, it seems. 

Sometimes, it’s old stuff in tech format, like our childhood’s Viewmaster® collection of reels and hand-held viewer.  [Thank you, Mattel.]

Other times, it’s a brand-new spin for ageless concepts, such as flash cards made digital.

No matter what, though, we get jazzed about the novelty – and pondering ways that we might use this software to great impact.

Take flash cards, for instance.  They were pre-school mainstays, helping us learn our ABCs and numbers and names of items.  Today, programs like Anki, Cerego, and Memrise not only jolt our memories, but also make our knowledge much longer lasting.  [Confession:  Which is how we got through college chem courses …] 

What’s more, researchers have proven that there’s something to these spaced-repetition tactics – i.e., fixing information in our brains through repeated exposure at planned intervals.  Students get better grades.  Memorizing is less onerous.  Even exposures to difficult foreign languages like Mandarin stick … somewhat better.

Imagine, for instance, salespeople drilled on products and pricing and spiffs.  Or the smartphones of new hires embedded with this software and info on the company, its strategy, history, vision and mission.  And the litany of human resources programs instantly recalled via visual images and quick blurbs.

Hmmm:  Candy retailers are so non-PC.  Shall we call it, ‘acting like kids in the Apple store’?

LIE TO US (WE DARE YOU!)

These days, software (and a brilliant engineer) can work wonders – or havoc.

A six-year-old program/company that analyzes facial expressions for ad campaigns and TV pilots, though not yet profitable, is getting much traction from the CBS’, Kellogg’s, and Unilevers of this world.  Now boasting a database of 2.5 million facial samples, Affectiva asks its subjects to watch a video on the computer screen while a computer camera watches them back.  Results, claim marketers, are a lot less touchy feely than findings from focus groups or polling.  Future apps?  Politics, education, and psychological conditions like autism.

Facial analysis actually started with the same Charles Darwin who pioneered survival of the fittest.  It continued with professors who’ve looked at almost every form of non-verbal communication known to man (and yes, chimpanzee too), from blinking rates (those who fluttered their eyes more in US Presidential debates lost all elections since 1980) to pupil dilation, eyebrow lifts, and forehead furrows.  Clearly, expression provides major clues about what we think and feel.

Yet no one has mentioned what might be the most intriguing of all apps:  To determine the link between employees and engagement.

Sure, it’s a bit Big Brother-ish (though subjects DO know that they’re being watched).  

On the other hand, how many of our leaders have questioned the percentiles of engagement, as foretold through surveys?  When do we ‘know’ that our teams and staffs have disconnected from their tasks?  At what time(s) would it be prudent to assess the state of employee well being?

The computer knows.  Or does it?

INFO-WHAT?

Software that turns data into charts and graphs is, similarly, transforming the art of presentation, exponentially, day after day.

Classified as business analytics, these tools are now produced by every major and minor e-player, from Microsoft and SAP to Tableau and Tibco, in a market that’s growing faster than the business of design experts.

Which is the issue, as we see it. 

Sure, we have zip argument with the need to pump up nonverbal communication.  After all, stats alone bear out the way we process data:  50 percent of the brain’s real estate either directly or indirectly touches vision.  Eighty percent of us remember what we see and do, versus 10 percent, what we hear, and 20 percent, what we read.

And we’ve been preceded by some pretty smart vis-info practitioners.  USA Today popularized information visuals in its front-page snapshots.  So did modern map-makers.  Edward Tufte, called the daVinci of data by The New York Times, gave us a series of tomes that define exactly how we should use design to communicate information.

We don’t do that. 

Instead, every possible number or word, when grouped, is subject to picture-ification.  Not much time is spent on considering content, comprehension, and communication, in our minds the three critical Cs of what we do.  [Not to mention the changing of behaviors!]

Florence Nightingale, more than a century and a half ago, persuaded Queen Victoria to improve the conditions of military hospitals through a graphic.  What would we say and do today?