Learn a new word: Nomophobia

My son hassles me from time to time because I have, (again, from time to time), became irrationally worried when we are out and about and I notice the battery life on my mobile phone has dipped below, say 80% or so.

It could be because I travel a fair bit and rely on my mobile more than most people for essential functions, or that for that last 7 or 8 years I no longer have a working 'home phone' so my mobile is the only way to contact me. Or it could be that I need UP TO DATE scores on Knicks, Liverpool, and South Carolina Gamecock games.

Actually, that is probably it.

But all of us probably at one time or another felt the creeping anxiety or frustration or maybe ever fear that comes from being without our mobile phones - either from a dead battery, being in a place with no mobile/data service, or even one of the rare (and disappearing fast) places where mobile phone use is not permitted.

How long could you go, in a non-emergency, 'normal' life situation, without having access to a working, functional mobile phone? An hour? Maybe two? Maybe much less than that, if you are the kind of person who more or less runs your life and business and family stuff from your mobile phone.

Turns out this anxiety/fear of being out of mobile contact has a name, or at least a proposed name - Nomophobia.

From our pals at Wikipedia:

Nomophobia is a proposed name for the phobia of being out of cellular phone contact. The term, an abbreviation for "no-mobile-phone phobia", was coined during a 2008 study by the UK Post Office who commissioned YouGov, a UK-based research organization evaluating anxieties suffered by mobile phone users. The study found that nearly 53% of mobile phone users in Britain tend to be anxious when they "lose their mobile phone, run out of battery or credit, or have no network coverage".

I'd say since 2008, the year of the referenced study above, that the percentage of folks who would admit to being 'anxious' if they were without their working mobile phone would be much, much higher. Like everyone, I am thinking.

Why bring this up, this pretty obvious, 'We all are reliant on our mobile phones and we get really squirrely when we don't have them or they don't work' take?

Because there is at least some responsibility from workplace rules and norms, and associated workplace technologies that are contributing to this phenomenon.

The original research into the causes of nomophobia most often cited respondent's need to keep in touch wth and be available to friends and family as the prime driver of their anxiety during times when they had no mobile access. Today, for many if not most employees and even contingent workers, I would probably add "the need to be able to see, respond, and otherwise be accessible to 'work'" as another significant driver of nomophobia-type anxiety.

Sure, we need to be able to text our kids to find out where they are, when they need to be picked up, or when they are coming home. Not being able to perform that function is a real hassle, and can be anxiety-filled.

But I bet if you were honest with yourself, you would rank 'Missing an important email from the CEO/Boss/Client' almost as high on your list of nomophobia triggers.

Once any tool becomes a workplace tool, the folks who architect and design work and our relationships to the tools we use for work have at least some responsibility to ensure that these tools are used, well, responsibly.

It is probably worth a minute or two, before 2018 really gets going and you won't have time for this nonsense, to think a little bit more about what we expect, demand, and require from our teams and ourselves, when it comes to being 'always' accessible.

We have a lot to get nervous and anxious about without worrying about missing an email at 11PM on a Saturday.

Postscript- The Wikipedia piece on Nomophobia links to a 2012 research paper titled 'Mobile phone addiction in adolescence: The Test of Mobile Phone Dependence (TMD)', that includes a 12-question survey (way at the end of the paper), to test your own addiction to mobile technology. Worth a look if you suspect you might have a nomophobia problem. 

Not Haunted

Take a look at the pic on the right side of this post. A 'For Lease' sign spotted in the French Quarter in New Orleans the other day.

Pretty funny and clever bit of advertising by the leasing agent. It is always kind of refreshing to see something so familiar, like a 'For Lease' sign, taken in a slightly or even entirely new direction. 'For Lease' signs are everywhere, they tend to kind of blend in to the surroundings like so many other aspects of the urban landscape. But this one, with the 'Not Haunted' sign stood out. In fact, in the five minutes I was standing near the sign, at least 4 or 5 other folks stopped to take the same pic of the sign that I did.

It is pretty easy to see something like the 'Not Haunted' sign and have a reaction along the lines of 'Look at this example, HR/Business professional, and try to make your communications, job ads, emails etc. more punchy so that folks will stop and actually read/remember them.'

But I think you also need to be careful with that kind of approach and advice. You can reasonably go two ways with dropping the equivalent of a 'Not Haunted' in your standard communications.

The first way is that you actually do get folks to stop and notice your communication or job ad with some kind of edgy line or element. Just like people stopped on the street to laugh at and take pictures of the sign, mostly tourists that had no intention of actually inquiring about the apartment lease, your folks, many of whom that might not be in your target audience, will stop and notice/engage with your content.  That is a win, mostly, but only a win if you have built up at least some credibility and trust as a communicator, and your moment of edginess has at least some context to support it. The 'Not Haunted' sign works in the French Quarter of New Orleans because in that place, themes of strangeness, weirdness, voodoo, and general fun prevail. 'Not Haunted' fits there. 

And that takes us to the other way the equivalent for you of something like 'Not Haunted' can turn out, as something that seems completely out of place, or creates a suggestion or an implication of an experience that you can't deliver. If you suddenly start punching up job ads will all manner of clever and newly invented titles, edgy statements of company culture, and describe the ideal candidate in some kind of a combination of rock star, champion athlete, and Don Draper-level creative, you run the risk of coming off as a little bit insincere, and trying a little too hard.

'Not Haunted' works on the New Orleans sign because it fits the context, it's quick to digest, and it shows that the communicator understands the place and the mindsets of their audience. It's easy to tell folks they should be more clever and funny in their communications. It's much harder to do well. And it's even harder than that to do it quickly and concisely.

Take a lesson from the 'Not Haunted' sign sure, but make sure that lesson is that great, funny, memorable communications are a job for real pros. Like Don Draper maybe.

Have a great Tuesday!

The League of Uniform Nomenclature

All organizations, companies, associations, teams, and even groups of friends have a shared language, terminology, and ways of describing, defining, classifying, and organizing their worlds.

American football teams and coaches are notorious for their own unique and often complex sets of terminology used to describe standard formations and plays.  A recent article in Sports Illustrated about the progress of Denver Broncos rookie quarterback Tim Tebow's adjustment to professional football emphasizes the complex terminology in the team's offensive schemes. The article notes that even an experienced player coming from a different team has to undergo a process of 're-learning' the new terms and language of the new team.

This is certainly important, the shared language has to be understood by all eleven members of the team, as the success of a given play is largely incumbent upon each player understanding not only their responsibilities on the play, but also awareness of the other ten player's assignments. In an environment like football, where a premium is placed on consistent and reliable execution of actions and reaction, the shared language is essential.  New players to the team, be they rookies like Tebow, or experienced veterans simply must adopt the language, the 'uniform nomenclature' if you will.

All workplaces have their shared languages as well.  Anyone who joins a new organization has to spend the first days/weeks/months learning the lingo - terms, definitions, acronyms, etc. Larger organizations may even have an entire manual dedicated to housing all the 'official' definitions and acronyms.  Most onboarding programs spend at least some time making sure that new employees start coming up to speed with the language, as certainly an important influencer of time to productivity is the ability to communicate inside the organization in ways that the organization understands.

But I wonder if in the rush to explain, to inform, even to indoctrinate people into the organization's shared language that it is easy to go a bit too far, too focus almost entirely on our system, our rules, our process, our methods, and our language.  Sure, it is important that the essential information about the organization structure and essential bits of terminology are shared and understood, but 

New employees come into the organization with an entire history of their own, and if you lived up to your stated (you know you have stated this somewhere) goals of hiring the best and brightest, then there stands a pretty good chance that there are element of process, organization, and yes even basic nomenclature that are better/faster/smarter than what you have been using all along.

So perhaps instead of taking the new rookie on the team and handing them the 527 page playbook to memorize before they get a chance to take the field, give them the essentials, and then give them some room, time, and encouragement to contribute to and improve upon the 'uniform nomenclature'. Because if all that was really needed to sustain organizational success was the need to 'learn the language', then you really wouldn't need to hire the best, just the best at memorizing.