WorkPuzzle

How Close Are You?

I’m currently on the road visiting clients, and just happened upon a cable TV program, chronicling the evolution of the principles of Facebook.  Although there's been a lot out there on this topic, I was struck by something that I had never heard before.  One of the Senior VP’s said that there had been massive competition at the very beginning.  She said that several colleges had groups of tech geeks stumbling upon similar social technology and developing it quickly, at that same moment in history. 

I don’t know why this surprised me, as this is exactly how almost all great inventions have occurred throughout history.  There comes a time when hundreds of people with similar interests and near equal drive converge with the development of some sort of service or tool that then generates a race, with stiff competition, to the finish line.  

So the question is:

• Why did Zuckerberg beat others to Facebook? 
• Why did Gates beat others to software? 
• Why did the Wright Brothers beat Dr. Samuel Langley to flight? 
• Why did Roger Banister beat other runners to the four minute mile? 
• Why does this matter to you? 

Well, although an extremely small percentage of individuals and companies will achieve these grandiose goals, what makes these people tick could be applied to us normal folk, and help us work with more hope, develop better dreams, and execute better than we do currently.

I recently read an article highlighting the significant difference between water heated to 211 degrees, and water heated to 212 degrees.  Although the difference is only one degree, a very small margin, that degree makes a huge impact....It is the difference between very hot water, of very little value (211 degrees)...and boiling water that produces steam which can power a locomotive (212 degrees).  

It leaves me wondering how small the margin of error is that may mean the difference between extreme success at providing an excellent product, service, or innovation to the world, versus just getting by... 

How close are you and those you coach to crossing over this margin and achieving tremendous success?  Don't get complacent...it may be just around the corner...

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Convincing Candidates It’s the Right Time to Begin a Real Estate Career

I just returned from a trip to the East Coast where I had the opportunity to spend some time with the owners and executive teams of several of our clients.  While my mission was to give presentations on the best practices of both new and experienced agent recruiting, I think I brought back more information than I provided...as is often the case.   

One of the common themes I heard as I listened to the recruiting challenges and obstacles that hiring managers face is that an increasing number of candidates are facing financial challenges with regard to starting careers as real estate agents.   

On the surface, it appears that the problem lies in the fact that candidates are just short of cash... However, as I started to question this premise, I quickly learned that the problem is more complex.  The real issue has to do with perception.  

From the candidate’s perspective, the risk-to-reward ratio in the real estate industry has risen to an unacceptable level. 

Let me explain.  When the real estate industry was growing aggressively in years past, the perception was that a significant amount of money could be made by venturing into this career field.  While the risk (start-up cost, lost opportunity of doing something else, potential of failing as an agent, etc.) was just as substantial back then as it is now, the chance of a potential payoff was much higher. 

So, the perception of declining rewards is the real problem.  Financial backing has a way of surfacing when a person believes a considerable reward can be reasonably attained.  This is why there is more than $1 trillion in education loan debt in the United States.    

So, how do you convince a skeptical public that opportunity still exists in the real estate industry? 

One way to do it is through the use of data.  To show how this can be done, I’d like to introduce you to Tom Prall.  Tom is the owner of Carpenter Realtors, a very successful 30-office real estate company in Indianapolis. 

If you walked into Tom’s office, you’d see stacks of research on his desk that he skillfully uses to guide his company.  If you went to one of his sales meetings, you’d be handed paperwork that meticulously describes, from a data perspective, the business reality of what is going on around you.  And, if you’re engaging Tom in a conversation, you best have some data to back up your assertions—otherwise it gets a little uncomfortable.  

In a recent email exchange, I told Tom that some candidates are losing hope in the career potential that real estate has to offer.  Shortly thereafter, I got a phone call that started… "Ben, I don’t think you’re looking at this correctly…"

During the course of our phone conversation, Tom laid out a case that now is the time for young candidates to embark on a real estate career.  The case was built on an analysis that included the total number of transactions, total number of agents, and per agent productivity averages for the Indianapolis market.   

The analysis also included trending from a peak in the market in 1979 that closely resembled the peak in the market in 2006.  He also tracked what happened during the subsequent six years in both cases. 

Something interesting emerged in Tom's analysis:  There is a tipping point when the per agent productivity averages start to grow by more than 10% year over year.  In the Indianapolis market, there are indicators that strongly suggest this tipping point will be crossed in 2012, thus making it a advantageous time to begin working as a new real estate agent.  The “economic wind” will likely be at a candidate’s back for the first time in six years! 

I believe Tom has figured out something very important:  

If you’re going to be successful at hiring under today’s market conditions, you need to be able to make a compelling case that the “reward” in the risk-to-reward ratio is both real and significant. 

If you’re accustomed to using anecdotal evidence, dated testimonials, or even cute stories about agent hires of the past, you may find yourself coming up short when it comes time to convince the best and brightest to join your team.  Like Tom has illustrated, be ready to have a serious, data-driven, business discussion about the financial prospects of becoming a real estate agent. 

By doing this, you’ll be better prepared to defuse the objections candidates have about start-up costs and initial risks.  If the reward part of the equation is compelling, candidates will again become motivated to find the money to get started.

Here's some homework for you.  Create one of two presentation items (a graph, a chart, an illustration, etc.) that demonstrate that now is the right time to become a real estate agent.  Print these items out and be ready to use them during your next interview. 

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Four Things Highly Productive People Do

One of the most important elements of a Real Estate Manager’s job is recruiting.  One of the most common tribulations managers face is time management.  They are tasked with deal doctoring, putting out fires, coaching, and in some cases selling, in addition to the general day-to-day operations of their office(s).  

Ilya Pozin, founder of Ciplex, a digital marketing and creative agency, interviewed Tony Wong, a project management guru who has served with the likes of Toyota, Honda and Disney.  As a result of this interview Tony shared seven characteristics of a productive person.  While seven points of interest were enumerated, I gleaned four that were of interest to me, and I hope to you.

Ilya first starts out by highlighting the fact that we are lovers of distraction.  I am indeed.  I see an email come in…I am right on top of it, regardless of the project at hand.  Ilya advises me to stop multi-tasking.  Yeah, right…I am a working mother of two active boys, and an avid tennis player…multi-tasking is my life.  Well, perhaps I need to settle down and focus if I truly want to be more productive.

Here we go…the tips towards being more productive:

1. “Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks.  Break down work into smaller and smaller chunks until you have specific tasks that can be accomplished in a few hours or less:  Sketch an outline or list of tasks that will lead you to your endgame.  That’s how you set goals and actually succeed in crossing them off your list.
2. Be militant about eliminating distractions.  Lock your door, put a sign up, and turn off your phone, texts, email, and instant messaging.  In fact, if you know you may sneak a peek at your email, set it to offline mode, or even turn off your Internet connection. 
3. Work on your own agenda.  Don’t let something else set your day.  Most people go right to their emails and start freaking out.  You will end up at inbox-zero, but accomplish nothing.  After you wake up, drink water so you rehydrate, eat a good breakfast to replenish your glucose, and then set prioritized goals for the rest of your day.  
4. Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals.  Your brain uses up more glucose than any other bodily activity.  Typically you will have spent most of it after 60-90 minutes.  (That’s why you feel so burned out after super long meetings.)  So take a break:  Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do something completely different to recharge." 

Okay, so this may be a lot to swallow, especially to execute all at once.  Baby steps...It may not be practical to apply all of these; It certainly depends on the job and the person, but I agree that even small steps towards productivity will lead to a more successful year in many aspects of the work/life balance.

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Editor's Note: Lee Gray is the Senior Account Manager at Tidemark Inc. Lee is a guest contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Stress, RESILIENCE, Hope, and Meaning

Many of you have experienced continuous, intense, and unrelenting stress over the past few years.  I have been spending more and more time thinking through the ramifications of stress, resilience and its long-term lessons for anyone who works. 

Dr. Salvatore Maddi, a Professor of Psychology at the University of California says:

“People who are high in hardiness enjoy ongoing changes and difficulties.  They find themselves more involved in their work when it gets tougher and more complicated.  They tend to think of stress as a normal part of life, rather than as something that's unfair.'' 

I wouldn’t say that I “enjoy” ongoing challenges.  Do any of you?  I believe Maddi might be exaggerating a bit to get our attention. 

However, there has been a great deal of research on the topic of resilience--This research has provided us clear characteristics, helping us differentiate people who thrive under stress, from those who become less healthy and tend to languish.  

Researchers have identified the traits of commitment, control, and challenge as the “transformational coping skills” shared by those who become stronger during stressful times.

More specifically, studies have shown that people who possess these coping skills are able to:

• Find the personal meaning in a challenge, rather than detaching and giving up;
• Plan out sound problem-solving strategies;
• Facilitate an atmosphere of support and encouragement among co-workers; and
• Help those around them build the traits of commitment, control, and challenge (they decrease the isolation, powerlessness, and fear that others feel).

I see in these findings something deeper that has certainly helped me thrive in stressful times, and I urge each of you to analyze yourselves...  At the core of the findings resides the affirmation of the values of community and meaning as essential ingredients in dealing with stress. 

How can we think about meaning and work?  The answer, I believe, can be found in whether an individual can articulate and truly believe the WHY of their work. 

Many, I find, can only articulate the HOW and the WHAT of what they do on a daily basis. 

These are the people who are the consumers of the world; They go to work to extract meaning from their work, rather than add value and meaning to every part of their jobs, and within the community they find themselves.  Don’t get me wrong, we are all guilty of doing this part of the time, but many people live there permanently.  

Then there are the gems...the people who can tell you the WHY of what they do.  With these individuals, there is a constant, unseen background of meaning and purpose that goes beyond bringing home a paycheck, motivating them to find meaning and hope behind every endeavor. 

These are the people we are drawn to...the people we find ourselves running to as a refuge in the storm.  What can you do to become one?  Figure out the WHY of your work...

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

MEASURING ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKING INFLUENCE—PART 2

Have you ever heard of Kred and Klout?  No, they are not your long lost Norwegian relatives.  They are new online social networking sites that are attempting to measure a person’s online influence.

Both for these companies (and a few others as well) have created scoring systems that attempt to put a value on the combined online influence a person has on various online social networks.  The Klout scores work on a scale of 1 to 100, while the Kred scores range from 1 to 1,000.  In both cases, the higher the score, the more influence the person has established online. 

As I mentioned in our last discussion, marketers are very interested in finding and working with people who have a lot of online influence.  If you can get a highly influential person to support your product online, good things can happen...this has been the case for some time.

The idea of a hiring manager researching a person’s online activities is not a new or uncommon idea either.  Dr. John Sullivan makes this point in a recent ERE article:

“It is now quite common to find, assess, and do reference checks on candidates using Google searches, LinkedIn, and Facebook profiles, and the assessment of work samples that can be found online.  In fact, a Microsoft-sponsored survey conducted by Cross-Tab found that 79% of HR and recruiting professionals responded that they currently use online reputation information as part of their hiring process.”

What is new is an attempt to measure this online influence in a way that one person can be easily, quickly, and fairly compared to another person.  The jury is still out on whether such a comparison can truly be fair, but we’ll leave that for the HR technicians to debate.

What I do think is worth noting is a potential connection between an individual who has a high Klout or Kred score, and the skills and capabilities that can be very useful in the real world.  Dr. Sullivan catalogues some of these talents:

1. Communications – they have shown that they are effective and frequent communicators
2. Relationship building — they are successful at attracting and building relationships with others
3. Influencing – they have the ability to influence others and to get others to read and spread their messages
4. Reputation — their reputation, credibility, recommendations, and ability to produce “Liked” content means that they will be listened to
5. Reach – their extensive contacts, friends, followers, and subscribers means that any messages they send will reach thousands
6. Branding – individuals with high social media scores have demonstrated they know how to build a personal brand and that knowledge may be transferable to product branding
7. Crowdsource solutions — their extensive network means that they will be able to quickly “crowdsource” answers to problems that they encounter
8. Writing ability — individuals who have a long blog history have demonstrated both their writing style and ability
9. Knowledge of technology — they have demonstrated that they are on the leading edge of social media technology
10. Adaptable – they are capable of continually adapting to the rapidly changing social media environment (if they have maintained their scores over a period of time)

Are these the skills that you’d like in the next agent you hire?  I can’t say that I’ve seen a more complete list of the characteristics that would make someone successful as a real estate agent!  If an online social networking score reliably benchmarked these skills, then you may have just stumbled onto the Holy Grail of real estate recruiting!

Like most things that sound too good to be true, there are a few caveats worth noting.  First, these measurement systems are in their infancy.  Ask around the office and see how many people have a Klout score.  Probably none.  Now ask how many have Facebook pages.  Probably most.  Facebook became a lot more interesting and useful once everyone was using it.  

The same is true for a Klout score.  Until a majority of candidates standardize on a common scoring system, use the system, and are willing to reveal it during the recruiting process, the concept will have limited value.

Secondly, these scores can be manipulated.  By nature, each provider will have weaknesses in their approach to capturing and evaluating the data.  And, just as search engine optimization techniques are used to manipulate web page rankings, these weaknesses will be exploited by some candidates in an effort to increase their scores.

For now, have some fun with this concept.  Go to one of the sites, register, and find out how influential you are in the world of online social networking.  Then, keep your eyes on this concept... If it grows, it may become very useful.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Measuring Online Social Networking Influence

As many of you know, the Tidemark team is a little nutty when it comes to the concept of measuring things. It is our belief that if something can’t be measured (in the business world), it doesn’t have much value. Without metrics, it is not possible to reliably optimize any business process and consistently make improvements.

This is one of the reasons I’ve personally struggled with making a connection between social networking activities and recruitment sourcing. And yet this is the most common question we get from our clients: "When are you going to figure out how to source more candidates via social networking?" I wish I had an easy answer to that question, but there are still some complexities that cloud the issue.

Traditionally, candidate sourcing is a marketing activity that depends upon gaining access to a large number of people who are “congregating” online for a common purpose—i.e. improving their employment prospects.

Because candidates typically gather in common online locations (a job board, a career information site, a professional society, etc.), there are “media pipes” that allow marketers to get their recruitment messages to these individuals. Getting the right message to the right group at just the right time is the challenge of recruitment sourcing. To be successful in this environment, we’ve learned to tweak content…measure…tweak delivery…measure…tweak timing…measure, etc.

While this process is challenging, the constant in this equation is that people tend to congregate online around a topic of interest to the group. In the online social networking arena, different rules apply. In this framework, people congregate online around relationships. And these relationships are often very eclectic.

For example, what does my grandmother have in common with my college roommate? Probably not much, other than the fact that they both know me. You can probably see why crafting a marketing message that would be of interest to both individuals would be near impossible. In addition, how could someone measure something so disconnected and random?

I’m still not sure there is a great answer to that question, but there are some really smart folks in several start-up companies who are beginning to ask these questions. And, in the process of trying to find solutions, they are identifying and tracking metrics that may help harness the marketing potential of the social networking medium.

The metric that these companies are trying to track is “influence.” By influence they mean--the propensity that a large number of people listen to what a certain person has to say. Or, in some cases, it doesn’t have to be a large number of people. It can be a small number of people who very passionately listen (and in essence follow the direction of) to an influential individual (if you happen to remember the Hale-Bopp Comet cult in late ‘90s, you have the idea).

Of course, the first variety of influence has been going on in pop-culture for a long time. When Oprah tells her audience that she is enjoying some book by an obscure author, the sales of that book explode. When Tom Cruise orders a beer with a shot of Patron tequila in the movie Vanilla Sky, not only does this mixed drink become popular, but also Patron soon starts to outsell other tequila brands in the United State by an 8 to 1 margin.

Obviously, most normal people do not have this kind of influence. But with online social networks, even "normal people" do have some influence. In fact, it turns out that some normal people (i.e. non celebrities) have a lot of influence...so much influence that they are starting to attract the attention of marketers.

In my next post, I’ll tell you about the companies who are doing the pioneer work in this area. Also, we’ll discuss how people who have a lot of influence in the world of online social networking may be some of your best hires.

Until then, put some thought into this question: Of the agents in your office and/or those in your professional network, who do you believe has the most influence?

Once you have this person in your mind, ask yourself: Has this person influenced any of the decisions you’ve made about products you’ve purchased, activities in which you've participated, or other ways you’ve spent your time and resources? If so, how did they do it?

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Employment Trend: 2 out of 3 New Jobs Go to Men

I came across an article earlier this week in USA Today that really has me thinking.  Here is the basis of the data that was being reported:

“Men are claiming more than two-thirds of the private-sector jobs created as the economy recovers, reversing a long-running trend that came within a whisker of giving the USA its first-ever majority-female workforce.

In a wrinkle that puzzles economists, one important driver of the trend is that hundreds of thousands of men are showing up in retailing, once considered a source of jobs for women.

Nearly 1.28 million men gained jobs in the 12 months that ended in November, compared with 600,000 women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).  Although men have returned to work in greater numbers in goods-producing jobs and service-related businesses, they're not returning to still-stagnant construction industries.

Instead, retailers have added 216,900 men — about five times as many as have been added by traditionally male financial services companies — vs. about 9,000 women.  Also, manufacturers have added more than 250,000 men and cut 33,000 women.”

What do you make of this?  Honestly, it seems to have a lot of people puzzled.  The Bureau of Labor Statics (BLS) has no idea why this is happening (“We haven’t studied why jobs are skewing male”), and the plethora of consultants who weighed in on the topic have not come to consensus on the cause either.  The online commentary regarding this article is fairly interesting, if you care to dig into it further.

Maybe someone will figure this out in the weeks ahead.  For now, I would like to focus on one issue that was clear in the research:  Men are beginning to take jobs in fields that were traditionally dominated by women.  While the retail sector was primarily highlighted in this article, this is also happening in “service-related businesses” as well. 

For the real estate industry, I believe this trend could have a positive impact.  Why?  Because many real estate companies continue to be plagued by the “part-time” mentality that limits the people who consider working as a realtor.

Of course, this mentality has its roots in what the real estate pioneers often called “housewife hiring” back in the ‘60s and ‘70s.  While that stereotype has faded over the years, it left a legacy that being a real estate agent was often best suited for those (males or females) who were in a relationship where the other partner could provide a steady income and medical benefits.

If the real estate industry is going to leave behind the part-time agent legacy and become a career field that predominantly employs full-time workers, this employment trend may push things along more quickly.

In essence, the more people (male or female) are looking for employment outside the traditional gender-based paradigms, the more people will consider non-traditional employment.  This means more eyes on the real estate industry...the largest non-traditional employment sector in the economy.

In the world of recruitment sourcing, we call this “churn.”  And employment churn (regardless of the reason it’s happening) is a good thing for a candidate base that has been experiencing some stagnation over the last few years.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

3 Resolutions For Making 2012 Practically Radical

In the midst of writing my own material for a New Year's blog, I came across some valuable insight on Daniel Pink's site, written by his friend, Fast Company co-founder, Bill Taylor.  The principles outlined in the article (below) were written last January, but are timeless lessons that will never age.  The suggestions are from Bill's book Practically Radical: Not-so-crazy ways to transform your company, shake up your industry, and challenge yourself.    

1. "I resolve to help my organization (and me personally) become “the most of something” in my field.  It’s not good enough to be “pretty good” at everything.  The most successful organizations (and people) are the most of something—the most elite, the most affordable, the most elaborate, the most approachable.  For so long, companies were content operating in the middle of the road.  Today, with so much change, so much pressure, so many new ways to do everything, the middle of the road has become the road to nowhere.  What are you the most of?
2. I resolve to embrace a sense of vuja dé.  We’ve all experienced déjà vu—looking at an unfamiliar situation and feeling like you’ve seen it before.  Vuja dé is the flip side of that—looking at a familiar situation (an industry you’ve worked in for decades, problems you’ve worked on for years) as if you’ve never seen it before, and, with that fresh line of sight, developing a distinctive point of view on the future.  The challenge for all of us is that too often, we let what we know limit what we can imagine.  This is the year to face that challenge head-on.
3. I resolve to look for new ideas in new places.  The more I study innovation, the less enamored I become of “benchmarking” the competition.  What good is it to compare yourself against “best practice” in your field, especially if “best practice” isn’t that great to begin with?  The most creative leaders aspire to learn from people and organizations far outside their field as a way to shake things up and make real change.  Strategies and practices that are routine in one industry can be revolutionary when they migrate to another field.  Do you have new ideas about where to look for new ideas?”

It's my belief that there are only two reasons we would resist adhering to Bill's resolutions above:  One would be complacency or laziness.  People who constantly grow, are people who consistently review their lives through some variant of the above.  Sure it takes time, reflection, stretching and focus, but it's usually well worth the effort.  Remember that others are drawn to people who live in this growth vector of change, even if it's small and incremental.  

The second reason some of us resist the above is fear.  Most of us fear change, and yet secretly hope for more.  These opposing factors are constantly at war within.  And yet for those who do risk the change, there is something divine in creating something new, seeing something differently, assessing one's blind spots and sometimes radical transformation.

On behalf of everyone at Tidemark, we wish you all a successful New Year.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

A New Year’s Resolution You Might Not Want to Hear

Did you get a new gadget for Christmas this year?  As we made our rounds to the year-end parties and get-togethers, it seems many people were again excited about their new technology devices.  Even my most technology-challenged business partner (I’m not referring to Dr. Dave) finally got an iPhone for Christmas (although he hasn’t taken it out of the box yet)!

New toys usually lead to more digital consumption--or at least a commitment to make use of the new technology.  Before you jump in with both feet and start texting your kids at the dinner table, I thought I’d pass on a new year's resolution that the CEO of a prominent technology venture capital firm recently made: 

“Focus on the live conversations at hand rather than parallel conversations on the screens.”

This resolution was made by Tony Tjan, the CEO, Managing Partner, and Founder of the venture capital firm Cue Ball. 

Tjan made this resolution because he’s noticed a rising and unproductive trend toward people trying to perform digital conflict resolution.  The de facto path for issue resolution seems to be increasingly via email. 

More accurately, email has become a convenient mechanism for issue-avoidance.  It is easier, quicker, less stressful, and less confrontational to have critical or challenging issues sent over email versus a live one-on-one with a counterpart.

If you have responsibility for coaching those on your team, or managing a pipeline of candidates as a hiring manger, this tendency can be particularly problematic.  Why?  Because you’re giving up one of your most useful and effective tools—the live conversation.  

Tjan goes on to describe how email and texts are inferior to live conversations:

1. It is hard to get the EQ (emotional intelligence) right in email.  The biggest drawback and danger with email is that the tone and context are easy to misread.  In a live conversation, how one says something, with modulations and intonations, is as important as what they are saying.  With email, it is hard to get the feelings behind the words.

2. Email and text often promote reactive responses, as opposed to progress and action to move forward.  Going back to the zero latency expectation in digital communications... it is hard for people to pause and think about what they should say.  One of my colleagues suggests not reacting to any incendiary message until you have at least had a night to sleep on it, and always trying to take the higher ground over email. 

3. Email prolongs debate.  Because of the two reasons above, I have seen too many debates continue well beyond the point of usefulness.  Worse, I have experienced situations which start relatively benignly over email, only to escalate because intentions and interests are easily misunderstood online.  When I ask people if they have called or asked to meet the counterpart to try and reach a resolution, there is usually a pause, then a sad answer of "no."

While you may be excited about your new device, and everyone is encouraging you to become more digital in your communication, do something counterintuitive:  pick up the phone and increase the number of live conversations you have this year.  

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.