High Touch

We Forgot Something on the Way to High Tech...

Web technology. The Internet and intranets. What fantastic creatures we've created. There's so much they're doing for us now and there's so much we don't even know that they'll do for us tomorrow

The web is rapidly destroying any secrets that may still exist in today's companies. It's helped pry open businesses that have kept their people in the dark for years. It subverts hierarchy and is helping to snuff out the command-and-control leadership styles that still exist in some corners of the world. It's an outlet for self-expression whether the boss wants to hear it or not. "You won't listen to me, I'll tell the chat room. They'll listen. They'll understand. They'll mobilize."

The web has created a genuineness about our discourse, making corporate-speak sound even sillier than it always has.

For companies that have historically shared vast amounts of information to improve performance, web-based technology has given them a turbo-boost. It's a communication channel that can push and pull information at twitch speed. It gives people access to personal portals, which, in turn, help them customize information to their needs. It gives sales people the ability to beam customer orders into distribution centers so customers can get their goods in a fraction of the time that it took before. It offers a sense of connectedness to people operating in remote parts of the world.

In their powerful book, "The Cluetrain Manifesto," Chris Lock and co-authors warn us about the new conversation between our customers and our people. "It's making them smarter and it's enabling them to discover their human voices. You have two choices. You can continue to lock yourself behind facile corporate words and happytalk brochures. Or you can join the conversation."

Networked computers have penetrated to the factory floor and are in the offices. They help people call up current product specifications, order replacement parts, review current manufacturing processes and engage in dialogue with other employees around the world. Motorola is using intranets to improve product development and introduction times. The company used a factory-based intranet to help its Mansfield, Mass., plant roll out new cable modems within six weeks. It eliminated costly start-up costs, made elaborate training unnecessary and enabled workers to identify new parts and instructions quickly and identify production steps with high error rates.

Hewlett-Packard has put nearly all information to its people on the internal web. "In fact," Lew Platt, HP's chairman, says, "we've been able to take information sharing to the point where we've achieved a measurable increase in productivity. In the past few years alone, our computer systems sales reps have seen their sales quotas increase fivefold, while their selling cost envelope has been cut in half."

But...too much of anything can be, well, too much. I hear a lot of breathless gushing about technology from communication professionals. Everyone's excited about it and should be. But we need to keep our senses about us and remember that web technology isn't an end unto itself, that it's part of a larger communication system that must be managed well for our businesses to win. We also need to understand that it's forcing us to communicate differently inside organizations. It's pushing for honesty and authenticity. It's making us talk like real people.

From Tags to Tools

I readily admit to being somewhat drawn to technological toys. One of my colleagues recently reminded me that I was the first person he knew who had a cell phone. That wasn't really that long ago. But, that phone weighed a ton and would barely fit into my briefcase.

I was an early user of Global Positioning System (GPS), a nifty satellite triangulation gizmo that tells me within a few feet where I am on my sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay.

But GPS in all its technological glory won't sail the sailboat. Close, but not quite. Many parts of the boat need to be managed well to sail a sailboat effectively and efficiently. Sails, keel and rudder for starters. They need to be managed as an integrated system.

Similarly with web technology. Many parts of the communication system need to be managed to drive a business forward. For example, what leaders say and what they do. The networks of systems that speak to us every day--rewards, measurement, policies and procedures, structure--all need to be managed as an integrated system that sends consistent messages about what's important and what's not and provides us with the information we need when we need it to make the decisions that help us win.

When I got my first GPS, I confess to being transfixed by it--even on sunny days in waters in which I'd been sailing for 20 years, sometimes only a few miles from home port. As I eventually learned all that GPS could do for me, as well as its limitations, my obsession with it subsided. Today, I'm more realistic than I was about its capabilities. I still push it to its max. But I also understand that I can't let it distract me from balancing all the forces that exist above and below the water. I still have to trim the sails when the wind shifts. I still have to manage the boat and lead the crew. GPS won't manage the boat. It won't lead the crew. Yet.

We need to treat web technology in much the same way. We need to continue to learn about it and learn from it, and then apply this great technology in ways that will help our businesses win. We must also appreciate that web technology is only one piece of a large communication system. Web technology can't manage the organization. It can't lead the team. Yet.

Face-to-Face Still Number One

We must carefully balance high-tech and high-touch communication.

People aren't genetically different from the way they were 10 years ago, before the web pervaded our organizations as it has. People want information to help them connect to the organization, its strategy and purpose. They want information that will help them make the decisions they need to win. They need to understand "what's in it for me." The web can help meet these needs.

But, as social animals, we need a sense of belonging and a sense of emotional intimacy. "The increased pace of change has increased our need for the stability that strong relations bring," Charles Grantham writes in his new book, "The Future of Work." "When everything's up in the air, strong emotional bonds give us the strength we need. It's ironic that the technology that increases our need for strong social systems to sustain us emotionally through times of great change also isolates us physically from each other."

At the end of last year, I led a team that assessed communication inside a global technology company. More than 90 percent of the company's employees said they preferred to receive business-related information online versus on paper, when given that choice. But when they were asked to assess the importance of 16 formal communication channels that exist in the company, one-on-one meetings scored highest, followed by staff meetings--and then the intranet. Employees perceived the three formal channels as equally effective. In follow-up focus group discussions with employees, people told us, in effect, that while both high-tech and high-touch channels performed their jobs equally well, high touch was still more important to them in doing their jobs well. And remember, this was in a company where people tend to be more technologically oriented.

Technology companies may be especially prone to over-emphasizing high tech at the expense of high touch. I've recently spoken with call center employees who say they never see or talk to their managers or anyone else in a leadership position. One told me, "She's (his supervisor) an engineer who's much more comfortable with sending me e-mails than having meetings. Her office is right next door to mine. She could easily get up from her desk, come around the corner and tell me something. Instead, she sends me an e-mail."

I've met with employees in one of the world's greatest technology labs and have heard them complain about the lack of face-to-face communication from what they referred to as "an aloof, distant and disconnected management."

To Lead, Think Before You Click

Just as the responsibility to sail a sailboat effectively and efficiently ultimately lies with the skipper, the responsibility to manage an organization's entire communication system lies with the leader--the CEO, the business unit leader, the team leader. Technology can bombard the organization with information. In fact, most of my clients tell me their number one communication problem is with this bombardment. "How do I sort through all of it?" they ask. Technology isn't doing well (yet) at sorting out what's relevant, providing context, creating shared meaning or giving people the individual attention they need to jazz up their performance. Increasingly, these are the leader's jobs. Technology is speeding up the shift in the leader's role from commander and controller to interpreter and servant. Historically, a leader's primary communication role was that of information keeper. Leaders controlled information and power. They disseminated information on a need-to-know basis--but usually when they thought pe ople needed to know, not when their people thought they needed to know. Technology has all but eliminated the information-keeper role because the information is increasingly available to everyone whether the leader likes it or not.

More and more, the leader's responsibility will be to help sort through and interpret what the information bombardment really means--what it means to the team and what it means to you and me.

The implications of this change in leadership are huge. If you look at the many companies that have already made this shift or that are well on their way, we realize that the principal implication is a wholesale redefinition of leadership and the skills and knowledge leaders will need in the future. It will require different selection and development processes. And it will change the accountability system--for what and how we reward our leaders.

We must keep our sense of perspective. We must carefully and thoughtfully use high tech and high touch to win.

Among the communication implications of technology are that we must manage it as a piece of an integrated system and redefine the communication role of leaders as well as how they're selected, developed and rewarded.

If we obsess over the technological gizmos, we're apt to forget the high touch that's critical to creating compelling places to work and generating high performance from committed people.

Jim Shaffer is principal, Towers Perrin, Roslyn, Va.

[This article was excerpted from Jim Shaffer's new book entitled "The Leadership Solution (Connecting people to strategy; Creating teams that act like owners; Communication tactics of today's top leaders)." It's published by McGraw-Hill.]

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