Sophia Reddy is an accountant in her late 20s who works in

the downtown Chicago office of Alicamber LLC, a wellknown

accounting firm with two dozen offices in the Midwest

and Southeast states. A few days ago, a partner in the

Chicago office asked her to participate next month in a special

project located in Alicamber’s Nashville office. The

project includes accounting valuation analysis of an insurance

firm, and Sophia’s specialized knowledge of auditing

insurance firms is apparently important for the project

team’s skill set. She will spend two weeks in Nashville working

on-site with that team. For two weeks before her visit, as

the project gets under way, she will work remotely from Chicago

with Thomas Kerbakker, the project leader, and his

team members in Nashville.

Sophia initially looked forward to her involvement in the

Nashville project. The brief secondment applies her specialized

knowledge, she will meet and learn from colleagues in

another city, and working in Nashville will be an interesting

change from Chicago. Two days after being advised of the

assignment by the partner in the Chicago office, Sophia

had not received any text message from Thomas, so she

took the initiative to message him first.

Hi Thomas. Sophia Reddy here. I am excited to join

your project. Gr8 to meet the Nashville team and learn

from each other. Pls text team member list and schedule.

Any b/g info you can send this wk would be helpful . Best,

Sophia Reddy.

Sophia expected Thomas to reply the same day, preferably

within an hour or two after her message was sent.

Coworkers in her Chicago office typically texted back

within that time frame. But no reply was received by the

end of that day. When Sophia checked the next morning,

Thomas still hadn’t replied. So, she sent the text message

a second time. Thomas still had not texted back to her

by the end of that day.

Thomas’s silence was beginning to irritate and worry

Sophia. Either her specialized knowledge for the project

wasn’t valued, or the project had been delayed, which would

throw off her schedule working on other projects with Chicago

clients.

On the third morning, with no communication from

Thomas, Sophia checked in with the Chicago partner who

had assigned her to the Nashville project. To her surprise,

the partner explained that although Thomas has a company-

provided mobile phone (whose number Sophia had

used for the messages she sent), he is one of those near-retirement

employees who apparently doesn’t do text messages.

Staff in the Nashville office are aware of this, so they

typically speak to him in person or over the phone. The

partner acknowledged that sorting out schedules is important,

but also mentioned that the project wouldn’t begin for

another month.

Armed with this information, Sophia returned to her office

to finally make contact with Thomas. She picked up her

phone, looked at it for a moment, then slowly set it down

again. Sophia visualized an awkward conversation. She had

never met Thomas, he is obviously much older than her, and

his reluctance or inability to send text messages was a sure

sign that the two have considerably divergent ways of thinking.

In fact, Sophia wondered whether the entire Nashville

office does things differently than her colleagues in Chicago.

Sophia calls clients when required, but even these conversations

are getting rarer in favor of text messages, emails, and on-site visits. As with many people her age, Sophia uses her

phone to do almost everything, except make phone calls!

As a compromise, Sophia decided to send Thomas an

email. It was a variation of her earlier text message, but with

much more formality as well as a subject line, greeting, salutation,

and company signature lines. Sophia even changed

“Thomas” to “Mr. Kerbakker” in the greeting. She surmised

that Thomas would prefer this status-laden introduction,

given his age and phobia with text messages. Sophia felt

odd writing so formal an email to a coworker or project

leader, but Thomas Kerbakker seemed to be the type who

would expect this approach.

A few hours later, Sophia received an email reply from

Thomas. It consisted of terse comments to each sentence

that she had written in her earlier email:

| Hello Mr. Kerbakker:

| I am excited to join the [insurance company] project team

| in Nashville.

good

| It will be an excellent opportunity to meet the Nashville

| group and learn from each other.

yes it will

| Please send me details of the team members and your

| proposed project scheduling. Any background information

| you can send this week would be helpful.

noted

Thomas

Sophia felt bewildered and dejected as she stared at Thomas’s

reply. Was he angry with her for some unknown reason?

He seemed too busy to welcome her and certainly

didn’t seem to care whether she was involved in the project.

“He didn’t even take the trouble to capitalize his

words!” Sophia quipped under her breath. Also, Thomas’s

reply didn’t give her confidence that the information she

needed would be forthcoming very soon. Sophia increasingly

regretted being assigned to this project. “This Nashville

assignment isn’t going to be as enjoyable as I thought,”

Sophia mumbled to herself.

Discussion Questions

1 Identify one or more symptoms that something has

gone wrong here.

2 Analyze the causes of these symptom(s) using one or

more communication concepts from this chapter.

3 What do you recommend that Sophia do at this time

regarding her interaction with Thomas and the Nashville

team? Assume that Sophia cannot back out of her

assignment to the Nashville project.

4 What should Alicamber LLC do to minimize these

problems in the long run?