Pick up the phone and call me please!

By Ricky Lyons in : Culture Thoughts // Jul 20 2010

I did an email exercise recently. I took three normal days worth of email and looked at them to see how many had some level of thoroughness. How many were just a long chain of short answers to questions that were not complete and led to the wrong conclusion? I found many. Each and every day I found several email strings containing ineffective piece-meal conversations.

I’d like to propose we start conversations with a phone call first, and then email for follow up purposes. The conversation would allow both parties to say “what about” or otherwise question each other quickly so that each have all of the facts allowing the answer to be complete and useful.

For a long time I have believed the high-speed level of electronic communication does not speed up our productivity. Often, it makes us far less productive, although we may appear busier.

Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman, the bestselling authors of “Sway” recently published “Click – the Magic of Instant Connections” [BrafmanBrothers.com]. They write, “We’re increasingly being told to maximize our efficiency. Write an email instead of picking up the phone; attend a video conference instead of flying across the country. Virtualizing our relationship is more efficient, more focused – we get right to the core of business and don’t waste time on extraneous content.” They go on to say that the problem is that you lose one of the great powers of relationships – the power of proximity. When there is close proximity involved – face-to-face or at least a phone call – you create “the social glue that enables the formation of deeper connections and relationships between people”.

Please pick up the phone more often – call me!.