Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Ahhh – Facebook.  Couldn’t live with it, now can’t live without it. For all those out there who do not wish to be part of this world known as Facebook, I completely get it. I was opposed at first because of the lack of privacy, and because I just didn’t want to be tied up with one more thing. Then I got an iPhone, and it just seemed natural to download that little app and give it a shot! I’m still far from obsessed, but I can see how people can get hooked.

I could gripe all day long about the inappropriate things people will post on their walls or as their status. However it is these people that make it humorous for me. When someone is posting their entire day’s activities, they need to be Twittering. Those people care about what you had for breakfast. Many Facebook users like to see just how many ‘friends’ they can come up with. I have been known to deny people that want to be my friend. I’m reluctant to give up all my privacy for people that literally are not my friends, and just want to be nosy! Sorry if I have not accepted your friend request, it’s probably because I don’t want to keep up with what you are having for breakfast everyday!

The structure of society and human behavior will continuously change, and so will the way in which we communicate. It was just the landline when I was growing up and going through that awkward communication phase in high school. I think I was asked to the prom face to face.  I seriously doubt that is the case now. There is a lot to be said about how kids and teenagers are currently communicating. Are they saying too much and talking to people they normally wouldn’t, because they don’t actually have to ‘say’ it? 

Although much of it might seem impersonal (a wall post versus a phone call), people really do want to communicate more and feel connected to others. I have family that live in Florida, cousins that I would normally not email or call on a regular basis. I love that I can see what everyone is up to, and see how their families are growing. It makes me feel connected.  

Earlier this week, a co-worker lost her dog. Within a day or so, many of her friends had posted notes about the missing dog. Three days later the dog was found, via a post on Craigslist.  Although it was not Facebook that found the little pup, it was amazing to see her network of friends pull together to spread the word. The possibilities are endless.

Accepting social media as a way of communicating is no different than we accepted email.  Heck, it's no different than when humans accepted the telegraph line or the printing press!

Many years ago I was traveling in the UK, and found myself in a little pub in Wales making friends with some locals. Wales is an awesome place to visit, but if you don’t know any Welsh, the place-names can be tough to work out. They look like unpronounceable jumbles of consonants - some of them might as well be in Chinese. After a few drinks, I built up the courage to ask my new Welsh friends, “so what’s up with the way y’all spell stuff?”

The answer, they told me, was that centuries ago it made it a lot harder on English invaders when they couldn’t actually say the names of the places they intended to invade and occupy. Basically, they were telling me, they spelled stuff that way to intentionally screw with English-speakers. And it’s a plan that clearly works on modern-day invaders as well.

I’m not sure whether that’s actually true or just what they tell tourists in the pubs. But I’m reminded of this because I’ve been reminded so often recently of how difficult it can be sometimes to communicate with clients and colleagues about technology.

I belong to the technologist tribe. I spend at least a little time out of every day doing technical stuff, writing computer programming code, and discussing technology with fellow tribespeople. At the risk of dating myself, I’ll just say I’ve been at this for quite a while. So if you’ll take my word for it, I’ll let you in on a little tribal secret. All this technology stuff isn’t even a tenth as complicated as you think it is. No really, it’s not that hard. What’s hard is talking about it.

Everything hard about technology is in the language: learning about technology from manuals and experts, describing it to people who are unfamiliar with it, asking for what you want, understanding what you’re being asked for - all of it really, really hard.

As someone who’s been in the tribe for a while, I can tell you that becoming a productive technologist is a lot less about the ones and zeroes than it is about simply learning how to communicate with fellow technologists, especially when it comes to teaching it to those who know less than you and learning about it from those who know more than you.

Communicating with people who don’t know any of the ones and zeroes stuff is an even bigger challenge. They need technologists to build technology for them, but they don’t have the language to ask for what they want in a concise way. Sometimes they have a hard time describing what they want in a vague way. How big a problem is that? Try this experiment: think of a popular song. Now find someone who knows how to play guitar or piano. Describe the melody, but don’t tell them anything else about the song you’re thinking of. Do it without reciting lyrics, humming or using any musical jargon. Unless you can get creative about how you communicate with your friend, then it’s not a question of whether you’ll succeed, but who’ll be first to get too frustrated to continue.

With that same kind of barrier between technologists and non-technologists, it’s not surprising that folks who are decidedly not in the technologist tribe can often get frightened, confused, frustrated and even a little pissed off when confronted with Klingon-sounding technical jargon. There might even be the slightest suspicion it’s not Klingon, but Welsh: that technologists’ language is intentionally obfuscated and dense, crafted to keep the magic within the tribe.

For the most part, that’s not true. But what is true is that both technologists and non-technologists are complicit in perpetuating a communication barrier that extends beyond just acronyms and technical terms. You have to be patient (and creative) if you’re going to get your ideas across that barrier. Understanding how and why the miscommunications happen, and how we’re each complicit in making them happen is key to getting there.

So why do technologists use so much jargon? Wasn’t the word “blog” jargon just a short while back? How and when do we get ourselves into these language-barrier predicaments, and how do we get ourselves out of them? In the next couple of articles, I’ll discuss some of the specific challenges we technologists face in discussing technology with our colleagues, our clients and each other, and how to overcome the urge to reject anything and everything that sounds like Klingon (or Welsh).

If you've heard it once, you've heard it a hundred times:  Corporations no longer control the message.  Consumers do.  Or the bloggers do.  Or the social media do.

Hang on just a minute.

That premise assumes corporate message is disconnected from corporate behavior. Such is not the case with the companies we work for.

If a corporation is straightforward with customers, is fair and honest with employees, is transparent with investors, then a corporation doesn't have to "control" its message.  It "lives" its message. 

In my experience, if a corporation has at its core a higher purpose, a purpose other than making a profit, it is more likely to live its message.  Few corporations - outside of presentations to institutional investors or stock analysts - communicate a message of profitability only.  But a corporation that communicates one message and lives another way day-to-day, that organization eventually will lose credibility.

It's just like a person.  Stress invades a person's life when he or she acts in ways that are disconnected with his or her beliefs. A corporation communicates authentically when it doesn't have to worry about crafting a message that is out of alignment with its behavior.

Are there exceptions?  Sure, there are exceptions to any rule.  Just like people, corporations are subject to unwarranted and unsubstantiated attacks from competitors, former employees, interest groups or the news media.  But the best inoculation against those attacks is living the message.