7.1 Chapter Review Questions

F. What strategies can you use to avoid email overload and, as a result, increase your productivity?

G. Explain the following components of constructively responding to uncivil digital messages: reinterpretation, relaxation, and defusing.

H. What strategies do you think are most important for effective texting in the workplace?

I. What are some strategies you can use to make better phone calls in the workplace?

7.4.Internet Communication Taking Over (LO7.1, LO7.4, LO7.5, LO7.6)

As researchers Simon Wright and Juraj Zdinak stated, Internet communication is slowly taking over traditional phone-based voice communication and face-to-face communication. Restrictions to local or regional communities no longer apply: The Internet has enabled easy global communication.41 Think about your future career and answer the following questions:

A. Is the prospect of communicating primarily via the Internet liberating? Explain.

B. Do you view the possibility of less face-to-face communication as disappointing? Explain.

C. What personal characteristics and skills are particularly well suited to success for predominantly Internet-based communication?

8.1.Social Media, Online Expression, and Collaboration (LO8.1, LO8.2, LO8.4)

Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, recently commented about the use of new communication channels. He specifically mentioned the use of social networking and the growing importance of Web 2.0 tools: As my kids became teenagers, I started looking at Facebook a little more closely. It was a significant amount of collaboration. There was open understanding. They didnt have a problem sharing their status. Nothing seemed to be secret, and they were living their lives very openly, and friends were commenting on each other and it was working. Here is my generation, which is very security-conscious and privacy-conscious, and I thought, what are the differences? This is the generation coming to work for us. Its not my generation. So we started having people make their presentations and record them for our internal website. We open that for review to a 360-degree workshop, which means your subordinates will review it. Your managers will read it. Your peers will read it, and everybody will comment on it. I will be, or your manager will be, one of the many who read it. So, every presentation was reviewed by 300, 400 people. What happened? There were two very interesting lessons that I learned. One, because your subordinates are going to see the plan, you cannot lie. You have to be honest. Two, because your peers are going to see it, you are going to put your best work into it. Third, you didnt learn from me. You learned by reviewing somebody elses presentation. You learned from the comments somebody else gave you. For the 8,000 people who participated, there was a massive collaborative learning that took place.

Based on Nayars comments and your own experiences, answer the following questions:

A. What are the potential personal and group benefits from using Web 2.0 communication channels?

B. What are some of the differing attitudes between generations about online expression? What impact might these differences have on workplace communication?

C. In what ways do online communications lead to more honesty and higher-quality work?

D. In what ways might online communications lead to less honesty and lower-quality work?

8.4 Challenges to Adopting Social Media for Professional Use (LO8.1, LO8.2, LO8.5)

Andrew McAfee, one of the premier experts on Enterprise 2.0 systems, commented about the challenges of adopting such systems and the shift in orientation needed by management to unleash a culture of User 2.0. I thought these technologies [such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Flickr, and YouTube] were essentially so cool that when you dropped them in an organization, people flocked to them. That was the assumption I carried around in my research. I very quickly had that overturned. This is not an overnight phenomenon at all. And while there are pockets of energy, getting mass adoption remains a pretty serious challenge for a lot of organizations. If youre a middle manager who essentially views your job as one of gatekeeping or refereeing information flows, you should be pretty frightened by these technologies, because theyre going to greatly reduce your ability to do that. If youre someone who sees your job as managing people and fundamentally getting the human elements right that will lead your part of the organization to succeed, these technologies are not at all harmful to you. One of the things that weve learned is that theres no technologyeven these great new social technologiesthats a substitute for face time. If you have another view of yourself, which is that youre someone whos responsible for output, these tools should be your best friend. Because all the evidence we have suggests that Enterprise 2.0 helps you turn out more and better products and actually is not a vehicle for time wasting or for chipping away at what youre supposed to be doing throughout the day.

Based on McAfees comments, contents of the chapter, and your own experiences, respond to the following questions:

A. What are the major obstacles to adopting Web 2.0 communication tools in the workplace?

B. McAfee distinguishes between information gatekeepers and managers of people. Explain what you think he means by this distinction and its relevance to the adoption of social software.

C. When are Web 2.0 communication tools more efficient than Web 1.0 communication tools such as email?

D. When are Web 1.0 communication tools such as email better choices than Web 2.0 communication tools?

E. Place yourself in the position of a middle or upper manager. Describe two ways in which the use of social media tools by your subordinates would benefit you and two ways in which they would threaten you.