Has Technology Affected Our Ability to Think?
By rdaprix | July 18, 2008
The July-August issue of The Atlantic features a cover story entitled “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” by writer Nicholas Carr. His thesis essentially is that our online proclivities are short-circuiting our powers of concentration and affecting our ability to focus. In his words, “My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing…I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading, immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. ..Now my concentration starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
Carr blames the fact that he’s been spending too much time online although he calls the web ‘a godsend to me as a writer.’ He adds, however, that the blessing of ready online information comes with a price. He observes that the net seems to be robbing him of his powers of concentration and contemplation. Again in his words, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.”
That he is not imagining his loss is evidenced in the work of developmental psychologist Maryanne Wolf from Tufts University. She’s an expert in the neurology of reading who claims we are ‘not only what we read but also how we read.’ In her work she’s discovered that when we read online we tend to be ‘mere decoders of information,’ a tendency that limits our ability to ‘interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction (italics mine.)
Carr ends by quoting the words of the playwright Richard Foreman in a view that resonates totally with me. He says, “I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my) ideal was the complex, dense and ‘cathedral like’ structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. I (now) see within us all…the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly available.’
If the end result of our powerful, and now essential, technological tools is the loss of the ability to think beyond the mere information given, we are in serious trouble as a democratic society.
Topics: Perspectives | No Comments »
Finding Our Groove
By rdaprix | July 10, 2008
A fascinating dialogue took place online a few weeks ago. The subject was the proper role of internal communication professionals in their respective organizations. It’s a subject that badly needs airing in a time when increasingly I believe that internal communication practitioners are losing their way.
The people that were engaged in the online dialogue are all veteran communication pros with years of experience in the trenches. The dialogue was triggered by an innocent query from another participant who asked if and how electronic kiosks made sense in a decentralized manufacturing environment. One of the first responses said that the issue was not electronic kiosks; that the question should be whether and how kiosks might improve the company’s performance at that facility. He went on to say that the real need was to look at the barriers to performance in that organization and to address those barriers with appropriate strategy. His position was that essentially all that matters is serving the needs of the customers and the shareholders of that company for quality products and services. He asked pointedly whether kiosks truly serve that overriding need and whether the absence of kiosks was truly affecting company performance.
His position soon motivated a very different response from an equally passionate participant, who said—in effect—that people don’t live by bread alone. Here’s his verbatim question: “Does the whole worth of employee communication consist in solving specific business problems?…I’m troubled by the implication that if you…haven’t got your whole program focused on troubleshooting performance issues, you are functioning at some primitive level of the craft. Let’s not forget that just plugging away at the creation and maintenance of an essential climate for success can be pretty darned strategic, if you’re good at it.”
A third participant chimed in with his view that after years of studying the issue of role, he had concluded that there were at least five roles that a communication professional could play. These were: communicator; educator; change agent; small c consultant; strategist. He added, “The first corresponds with an infrastructure/channels/vehicles/content aggregation/dissemination role. The second is the training/coaching role, making others good communicators (CEOs; supervisors). The third refers to the role we play with corporate strategy execution, in particular with resulting change management programs and required large-scale culture/climate/behavioral change. The fourth is what I would call small c communication change built around specific operational process improvements. Finally the fifth, which I have labeled as strategist, focuses on being a player in the organization’s overarching strategic management process…”
Aside from the quality of this discussion is the largely ignored debate that underlies it and that needs to be engaged by more than these three veteran communication pros. What I read mostly these days about our profession is related to technology and the need to introduce more social media into our organizations. In my opinion that conversation badly misses the mark. Worse, it’s a distraction from the really important questions facing our profession and the need to debate what would constitute our value-added role in organizations in the midst of chaotic and revolutionary change. That’s a monumental question that begs to be answered in these bewildering times if we are truly going to help our organizations succeed.
I have been working on a new book entitled “The Credible Company: Communicating with Today’s Skeptical Workforce.” It’s scheduled for publication by Jossey-Bass Publishers in October of this year. After outlining what I believe is a proper communication prescription for today’s skeptical audience, I conclude that ours is a profession at a crossroads. We can sink deeper into craft, continuing the tendency to apply newer and newer technology as an end in itself with slight regard to human needs in the workplace—in the process making ourselves more and more irrelevant to our leaderships and our audiences. Or we can wake up to the complexities of getting through to a skeptical workforce with a sound strategy that addresses their needs and views.
It’s high time we began to look seriously at this issue and to put aside the narrow view that is now clouding our collective vision of the proper role of communication in the workplace.
Topics: Employee Engagement, Perspectives | No Comments »
Why Dissent Matters
By jpollack | July 9, 2008
I recently read an excellent book entitled Why Societies Need Dissent. Citing examples from the public and private sector, its author, University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein, methodically explores how and why groups often make bad decisions, as well the characteristics and behaviors of groups that make good decisions.
One common denominator is the degree to which groups large and small cultivate or suppress a diversity of opinion. Those that butt heads in constructive ways generally make better decisions. Those that don’t are essentially agreeing to make peace – not necessarily decisions that are in the group’s best interest.
At a time when society is paying the price for the silencing of dissenters and the appalling hubris of risk-takers – from the indicted hedge-fund managers at Bear Stearns to President Bush and his disastrous invasion of Iraq – America would do well to encourage a great deal more introspection, scrutiny and criticism, both in business and government.
As Sunstein writes: “Well-functioning societies benefit from a wide range of views; their citizens do not live in gated communities or echo chambers. The fantastic economic success of the United States owes everything to a culture of open information. Indeed, economic markets themselves embody norms of openness, ensuring success for those who innovate (and innovation is itself a form of dissent).”
That said, while many organizations say they like innovation, fewer actually tolerate – let alone encourage – internal dissent. Those employees that speak up – often with perspectives that don’t quite square with a corporation’s self-image or goals – are often marginalized. In the short term, this pressure to conform keeps the trains moving. Unfortunately, many such trains are often far down the wrong track when the wisdom of the dissenter’s voice later becomes apparent.
In related reading, I recently enjoyed another book, New Yorker writer James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds. His basic argument is that groups generally make smarter decisions than individuals. One important characteristic of such successful groups is cognitive diversity – in other words, people with different opinions. Citing examples from NASA disasters during both the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs, Surowiecki argues that the Apollo group made better decisions due to its greater diversity.
“This seems hard to believe,” Surowiecki writes, “since every engineer at Mission Control in the late 1960s had the same crew cut and wore the same short-sleeved white shirt. But as [former Mission Control operator] Oberg points out, most of those men had worked outside of NASA in many different industries before coming to the agency. NASA employees today are far more likely to have come to the agency directly out of graduate school, which means they are also far less likely to have divergent opinions. That matters because, in small groups, diversity of opinion is the single best guarantee that the group will reap benefits from face-to-face discussion.”
That said, it’s still not always easy to speak out, to be different, to say no – especially in a culture that rewards conformity. Who likes to be the nail that people stub their toe on? Ultimately, we have to get along. But that doesn’t mean we have to go along. Take it from Thomas Jefferson, who penned the Declaration of Independence and ended up President. “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing,” he wrote. Maybe even inside the padded cubicle.
Topics: Perspectives | No Comments »
Global Solutions through Communication and Collaboration
By bfsmith | July 8, 2008
Hello colleagues and friends,
This is my first official blog entry on The Bottom Line. It’s an exciting time in the world of communication. We have so many more tools to connect our world. My hope is that these tools will enable us to collaborate on a global basis and turn around the destruction of our world. There are no coincidences, and I believe our communication and collaboration ability has increased to meet the increasingly urgent need to come together as a global community and solve our collective problems – top of which is global warming. We all must play a role in creating solutions. As communication professionals we are poised to influence, educate and enable millions of people to take action.
In a month I leave with my family for a six week trip through SE Asia and then a stint of 3 – 4 months living in Bangalore, India. I’m excited on several levels. First, it will be a fantastic experience personally for me and my family. My daughters are 8 and 12 and they will go to school during that time in Bangalore. My husband will use the time to write that book he’s always wanted to write. And I will be soaking up the experience on several levels, including exploring business opportunities in India and helping to build the community of communication professionals there through the IABC.
I will continue to post on this blog as I travel through China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal and then India. I plan to meet up with other professionals on the way and get insights into the issues they face with booming economies and rapid growth.
Thank you for your interest. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Until next time!
Barbara
Topics: Perspectives | No Comments »
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