More evidence that texting is the best way to connect with talent

A few months ago I had a piece on the blog titled 'The most engaging method of communication you're not using' about the increased growth and the massive engagement levels driven with text communications.

I used the below chart from Business Insider to back up much of my take on how if you really want to engage with people - employees, candidates, prospects - whomever - that getting permission to communicate via text was the way to go.

 

A practically equal number of texts sent and received across all age cohorts indicate incredible engagement and interaction in the medium. When people receive a text, they generally reply. And the sheer volumes of messages being sent by members of the 18-34 year old age range both indicate that more and more texting (or similar short, disposable communications tools), will need to become a tool in your toolbox if you want and need to effectively connect with people.

Want a more practical and real-world, (ok a sports world) example of how this change in communication methods is playing out with top talent?

Last week American soccer star Clint Dempsey transferred from Tottenham, the English Premiere League club he had been playing for, to the Seattle Sounders of the US-based Major League Soccer. This was pretty big news for US soccer fans, as well as relatively important news for world soccer in general.

Dempsey is not only a club-level star, he is probably the US National Team's best all-around player, had seen success in a top-flight European league, and is still relatively close to his prime playing years. And with the World Cup only one year away, for a player of Dempsey's ability and national team importance to move to Major League Soccer and away from the English Premier League was a big story.

But back to the point of this post and how texting plays into this.

Check two excerpts from a recent SI.com interview with Dempsey, as he describes the process of changing clubs, his role on the US National team, and some of the communications that took place between him and club and country leaders over that time.

SI.com: Did you have a heart-to-heart at one point with Tottenham manager André Villas-Boas?

Dempsey: I didn't. I really just had a heart-to-heart with my family, talked to my wife, to my mom and dad, to my brothers and my sister. And had a few sleepless nights just going over that decision and wanting to make sure I was making it for the right reasons, and that I felt good about it. You have to get that gut feeling that you're doing the right thing. It was good for me to be back with Tottenham in preseason and be around it to make that decision instead of being removed from it on vacation in the summer. I was able to be there, be in training and really think about it.

After I left, [Villas-Boas] sent me a really good text. He was happy with what I was doing and I was going to be part of his plans. He wished me the best. I'm grateful for him. He gave me an opportunity to see what it was like to play at a big club. So I'll always be grateful for that, just to get that experience.

Later in the interview, Dempsey discusses some upcoming US Men's National Team games and his conversations with coach Juergen Klinsmann.

SI.com: Have you had a chance to talk to Klinsmann since you made the decision to go to Seattle?

Dempsey: Just text. He said he wasn't going to bring me in for this game, but he was looking forward to making history in Costa Rica [in the World Cup qualifier on Sept. 6. The U.S. has never won in Costa Rica in nine tries] and making sure we book our tickets to Brazil [for the World Cup]. I'm excited about getting my 100th cap, and hopefully we do make history in Costa Rica.

Did you catch that?

Dempsey leaves one high-profile English Premiere League team Tottenham - and only communicates with Villas-Boas, his former manager there via text.Text me, bro.

Then as the move to Seattle impacts his fitness and availability for some upcoming National Team games and again he only communicates with US manager Klinsmann via text.

A top talent like Dempsey makes a major career move and the two most important executives involved in the process only interact with him via text message.

And no one, not Dempsey, not Dempsey's family, not the author of the SI piece, raises any objections or questions about the choice of text messaging as the communication method. No one asks, 'He only sent you a text? He didn't call? He didn't have a meeting with you?'

Look at Dempsey's quote again "After I left, [Villas-Boas] sent me a really good text."

He sent me a really good text.

And it seems like for Dempsey, 30-year old soccer star, that is just fine.

VIDEO: Innovating loneliness

A couple of years back now the HR Happy Hour Show welcomed Sherry Turkle from MIT, and author of Alone Together: Why We eExpect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, an examination of how the rise of social networks, more powerful and connected personal technology, and how these advances are changing our real world interactions.

It was then and probably still is one of my Top 5 all time favorite conversations that we've ever done in 168 shows to date. If you are at all interested in the topics of social networking, the dangers of being always connected to our devices, and even, (one of my favorite topics) the continuing emergence of increasingly sophisticated artificial and robot technologies into everyday life, then I encourage you to check out the replay of the show here.

What made me think about that show was reading about and watching the video embedded below, (Email and RSS subscribers will have to click through), called The Innovation of Loneliness by Shimi Cohen.

In the video, Cohen hits on some familiar concepts - Dunbar's Number, the inability to truly be 'alone' in our always-connected world, the endless amount of personal branding and promotion going on, and the curious rise in the incidence of loneliness despite the technological advances that connect us.

Favorite line from the video - 'We're collecting friends like stamps'.

I don't have a bigger point or lesson to try to share here, except that even three years on from that old Happy Hour Show with Professor Turkle I am not sure all that much has changed - and if anything the issues raised in Alone Together have not gone away at all - and in fact have become even more prevalent.

The book, the podcast from 2011, even the short video by Cohen are all worth a re-visit I think, as well as another examination in how we relate to each other and the world around us when we are constantly connected, shaping a stylized image of ourselves, and parceling out time to actually talk to other human beings in tiny bits - afraid about what we might be missing elsewhere in the world if we have to focus our attention on just one other person.

Vacation Week - Read this instead #4

Note: The blog is on vacation this week, so you should read this instead...

DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU’LL BE 285 DAYS FROM NOW AT 2 P.M.? THESE DATA-MASTERS DO

From the piece:

Using information from a pool of 300 volunteers in the Seattle metro area, Sadilek and Krumm gathered a mountain of location data. As the volunteers went about their daily lives--going to work, to the grocery store, out for a jog, even for transcontinental travel--each carried a GPS device much the same way they carried a cell phone. To further ensure accuracy, the researchers also installed GPS devices in commercial shuttles and transit vans that the volunteers used regularly, and the volunteers’ own vehicles. After collecting over 150 million location points, the researchers then had Far Out, the first system of its kind to predict long-term human mobility in a unified way, parse the data. Far Out didn't even need to be told exactly what to look for--it automatically discovered regularities in the data.

It turns out that no matter how spontaneous we think we are, humans are actually quite predictable in our movements, even over extended periods of time. Not only did Far Out predict with high accuracy the correct location of a wide variety of individuals, but it did so even years into the future.

Read the rest here...

Vacation Week - Read this instead #1

Note: The blog is on vacation this week, so you should read this instead...

MIT Technology Review - How Technology is Destroying Jobs Hello there

From the piece:

What’s more, even if today’s digital technologies are holding down job creation, history suggests that it is most likely a temporary, albeit painful, shock; as workers adjust their skills and entrepreneurs create opportunities based on the new technologies, the number of jobs will rebound. That, at least, has always been the pattern. The question, then, is whether today’s computing technologies will be different, creating long-term involuntary unemployment. 

Read the rest here.

Have a great week!

If you want to understand work, you have to understand email

I don't care how much your enlightened company pushes cutting-edge social collaboration tools, uses an internal social network like Yammer or similar, or even has set up Facebook or LinkedIn Groups for internal company communication and collaboration - you are still sending and receiving ridiculous amounts of email every week.

Don't lie like you like to - you have a problem, a bad habit that manifests itself in endless email conversation threads, tapping out five word responses on your iPhone while waiting on line at Starbucks, and conversations that often include questions like 'Did you see my email?' 

Of course she saw your email. She 'sees' every email. She's just ignoring your email.

But that aside, for a technology, communications tool, and collaboration medium that we all use so much, we understand and attempt to analyze just how we use email. Sure, we might know how many unread messages are in our Inbox, and how often we need to delete stuff since we are always surpassing some nonsensical IT-imposed storage limit, but aside from that, we don't really think about email and how we use it to get work done all that often (if ever).

An aside before I get to the point. If you work someplace where you are always going over your email storage limit then you need to consider working someplace else, or if you have any influence over this kind of thing, finding some new IT people that will make that problem go away. No one should ever run out of space for storing work-related email. That's it. And I won't argue with anyone on that point because you are wrong.

Ok, back to the post.

If you are a user for Gmail for work or even for mainly personal reasons, a new project out the MIT Media Lab can help shed some light on how you actually use Gmail. The tool called Immersion, creates a really cool visualization of your email activity, and more importantly, it helps illuminate the sub-networks and collaborative teams within. An example of the network view that Immersion creates, from my Gmail activity, is below, (and some related stats are along the right side of the post).

Click image for an even larger view

Immersion uses color coding, network connection links, and size/distance of the nodes to help understand with whom you are most frequently emailing, who else is likely included in those conversations, how often they occur, and the topics or projects that are being worked on.

On my chart, I can see pretty clear delineation between messages about HRevolution, Fistful of Talent, HR Technology, as well as personal and fun stuff as well. But the key point is that the Immersion tool offers a little bit of a window into how I am actually using email - the one technology that I am still sad to say dominates many workdays.

You probably can't leverage the Immersion tool, (yet), if you are using a corporate, MS-based email backbone. But you can put some pressure on your IT pals to find some tools and methods to help you and your organization better understand how and when and in what manner the number one collaboration technology in your organization is being used.

They have time believe me. And make sure you tell them to quit with the 'Your mailbox is over the storage size limit emails.'

Everyone ignores them.