Despite the alarming headline on this morning’s Wall Street Journal article Instant Messaging Invades the Office, it’s actually overall positive about how instant messaging changes workplace communications. Looks to me like print media journalists are starting to understand that access to a lot of information and to our colleagues is not a bad thing — it’s often a good thing, so long as you know when to shut it off:
Paul Tidball, an SAS product manager who works from his home in Oregon, says instant messaging makes him feel less isolated. Through IM, Mr. Tidball finds it easier to collaborate remotely on projects and find co-workers around the clock. He sometimes limits their ability to find him, however, by signing off the instant messenger program. “At some point you just have to put the mouse down,” he says.
Instant messaging can release us from email slavery too:
Ms. Liberko… says that instant messaging has reordered her communication priorities. She now deals with messages first, followed by voicemails, and finally email. At 11 a.m. one recent day, she had 150 unread email messages, she said, and no intention of “even glancing at” them before the day’s end.
Okay, some might say if she’s got 150 unread email messages and she’s not reading them she’s in trouble — but that’s only if you assume that the important information in her email won’t get to her in some other way. So long as she stays connected and available by other channels at least some of the time, email can drop to last place on the priority list. Her coworkers will learn where to find her.
I know some people find instant messaging terribly annoying and a productivity sink while others think the buddy list is the center of the universe. However you feel about it, you may not be able to escape its diffusion into the workplace. Researcher Stefana Broadbent of Swisscom found in her studies of communications patterns that “Users are showing a growing preference for semi-synchronous writing over synchronous voice.”
One Comment
Regarding the story by Carola Mamberto headlined “Instant Messaging Invades the Office” in the July 24, 2007 edition of The Wall Street Journal, there’s a story behind the story. Carola Mamberto failed to attribute any of the material to Evan Rosen, a blogger and author of two books on collaboration including The Culture of Collaboration (www.thecultureofcollaboration.com), which our company published. Evan developed and proposed the story on how IM is changing workplace dynamics to The Wall Street Journal, and he provided much source material to Carola Mamberto including pre-qualified company contacts and a copy of his new book.
Mamberto interviewed Evan extensively face-to-face about IM and collaboration, and 3 out of 4 of the company examples in the story came from Evan—SAS, Constellation Energy and Industrial Light & Magic. In fact, Evan writes about how SAS and Industrial Light & Magic use IM in his book! An account of how IM is impacting workplace dynamics at SAS replete with quotes from CIO Suzanne Gordon appeared in a book spin-off story by Evan in the January 4, 2007 issue of NetworkWorld. Here’s the link:
http://www.networkworld.com/research/2007/010807-collaboration.html
Did Carola Mamberto attribute any of the material to Evan or quote him? No. Instead, she quoted two people affiliated with east coast universities. These so-called experts have done little or no work on real-time collaboration or IM.
Why should anybody care that The Wall Street Journal burned our author? Well, this is all too common with old media outlets. Rather than give credit to people who are the real authorities, these bastions of journalism prefer to appropriate ideas without attribution and then round up the usual suspects or people with certain approved affiliations for “big-picture quotes.” This is exactly why the blogosphere is giving old media a run for its money. Bloggers and podcasters can disseminate information directly without old media filtering, appropriating, or failing to attribute their material. It’s no wonder that old media readership is declining and the business model is in trouble. As old media outlets struggle to remain relevant, they are doing more gatekeeping than reporting. Information consumers increasingly prefer their information served straight up and unadulterated with the writer’s bias obvious rather than oblique.
Katherine
Red Ape Publishing