Email, social apps, video call ...communication is changing but is it for the better?

R eml exchanges confusing u?

R we taking txt typing 2 far?

Are acronyms taking over?

Do you read a message and have an internal rant at the tone of it?

Does the quality of the written word in the day to day business world leave a lot to be desired?

It seems to me that there is a heck of a lot more interaction today digitally, than there is verbally.

Rather than picking up the phone, (to talk), we are having email, WhatsApp or LinkedIn DM conversations…just to name a few

Is it the aftereffects of COVID or a self-confidence issue that we don’t talk as much?

Are we too busy to go through the palaver of making a call or are we just hardwired to type?

Maybe it’s just that GenZ are establishing a foothold in the business world, they have grown up with devices and social platforms in the same way that I grew up with a desk phone and a card system address book!

I know from personal experience that GenZ would prefer to have a typed conversation rather than actually speak, I even send Whatsapp messages to my boys to tell them their dinner is ready rather than shout. Talking falls on deaf ears!

There is no problem with written communication but it does start to grate when text message abbreviations, emoji conversations and too many acronyms start appearing in emails.

Everyone is under time pressure and in my opinion, in many cases, communication is not being fully read and understood. Instead the content is being skim read and a response sent back, which passes the buck back to the originator.

I’ve seen your message and responded, now it’s up to you to act on it and reply back.

How many times have you received a mail, and it has sparked an emotion?

You want to respond with CAPS LOCK ON TO GET YOUR POINT ACROSS!

But I have experience where two people or more can read and interpret a single piece of text in different ways.

We need to consider the senders point of view, maybe they’re having a bad day or just rushed a response.

Maybe I am having a bad day and my mood is clouding my judgement!

The world is a smaller place, maybe English isn’t the senders first language and the content appears a little abrupt?

I have a system

Read the message, then read it again. Do I understand all that is being asked?

Remove emotion from my interpretation and just analyse the facts

I do the same when sending a message, type it, read it….then read it again.

Does it make sense?

Will the person I want to read this understand the language I’ve used?

Have I overcomplicated the message or worse, is it too vague?

It’s a fact of life that our fingers are getting more action than our voices, so let’s at least produce some quality with what we type!

Then again, is this a redundant argument?

How might we be communicating when Gen Alpha enter the working world?

Will we be sitting in our workspace, home office, internet café or garden wearing VR headsets and conducting meetings in the Metaverse?

With voice recognition software, VR glasses and wearable tech, are keyboards, as we know them today, going to be obsolete?

When I consider the advancements I have seen in my working career over the last 30 years, I would never have thought that one day I would have a supercomputer in the palm of my hand or travelling in autonomous vehicles or even sharing my thoughts with complete strangers in a world that at the time didn’t exist!

I can only guess that the technological advancements over the next 30 years are going to be absolutely mind boggling to us. But, in a sweet revenge type of way, at least then GenZ will be able to relate to how us GenX’s feel living in the 2020’s!

Do you use platforms like TikTok and Instagram for business, is WhatsApp an everyday tool you use to communicate with your team

Be interesting to get a perspective from the technology pioneers in my network on the next big adoption into the business world either through natural progression or necessity.

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