Net Working
by Walter Sonyi, Jr.
Once upon a time, everybody wrote letters-for business and personal
reasons alike. Much of the early history of the United States is illuminated
by the founding fathers' correspondence to each other and to their wives.
Dispatches sent home by soldiers during the Civil War give a much better
sense of the time and the conflicts than any conventional history text.
And in more recent, happier times, the letter has been a staple of
business communication, in both real life and in popular culture: up
until the mid-1970s, just about every movie set in a workplace included
at least one scene in which a secretary would be called, steno pad in
hand, into her (always a her) boss's office to "take a letter."
Two factors conspired to change this situation. First, the equal rights
movement allowed women to break out of the secretarial pool in ever
greater numbers, leaving bosses to type their own letters (and corporations
to enjoy the savings from not having to pay as many "administrative
assistants," as they're now called). And then came the explosive
growth of email. It's created a whole new way of transmitting text-along
with an entire generation of workers for whom the idea of writing a
formal letter to a colleague is almost as anachronistic as the coffee-fetching
secretary.
But just because email, with all its attendant grammatical sloppiness,
is easy, convenient, and widely accepted, doesn't mean that a slapdash
note is the most effective way for workers to conduct their business-especially
when it comes to dealing with people of different ages, who may have
different standards of formality.
But in the big picture, sheer volume isn't really the problem. Many
people in business, especially workers who grew up with the technology,
don't know how to use email as an effective tool. "Young people
tend to do business by email and think that they're really doing business
and networking and making connections, when in fact they're not."
Email, can be a far preferable form of communication to, say, the unexpected
phone call. Still, and I'm trying not to let age and wisdom get in the
way here, but it's like someone who's only eaten at McDonald's their
whole life thinking that they've gotten a wonderful meal. There's a
much richer work environment out there, and I think you miss a lot of
the interaction with people when you email too much. One of the biggest
problems is that many people, especially those in their twenties, fire
off slap-dash emails to superiors or people they'd like to network with,
forgetting that their targets weren't necessarily raised in an era when
it was okay to call adults by their first names.
"People in their twenties came out of college into a great labor
market and developed a lot of sloppy habits from living in these times
when people will hire you even if you can't spell your name," comments
Kate Wendleton, president of the national career counseling organization
The Five O'Clock Club, which, among other things, sponsors networking
meetings of member professionals across the country.
"Older people have been through some tough times and take their
communications a bit more seriously. They put more effort into it."
And when younger workers don't take the time to craft their e-mails
carefully, they can suffer as a result.
"I find that people get very careless about things like spelling,"
confirms Faye Fardisheh, managing director at Hill & Knowlton. "Sure,
lots of people tend to use email as their main form of communication,
but the relationships that develop aren't as intimate as if they were
taking place by phone or face-to-face." As a result, says Fardisheh,
"People don't have the visual and verbal cues they'd have otherwise.
What you miss out on is how certain topics can come in the middle of
a conversation."
To get the most out of emails-especially more formal ones, such as
those sent for the first time, to someone the author of the message
would like to get to know better-use a word processing program to write
the note, and then paste it into an email. Even though it's not being
sent out on a piece of letterhead. We are still talking about a serious
and handsome kind of thing here. Pay attention like you were sending
a piece of snail mail.
These notes should follow a three-step plan. "In the first paragraph
of your email, you should introduce yourself-whether you've met before
or not. Either say something like 'it was a pleasure meeting you at'
wherever you met, or say that 'So-and-so suggested I get in touch with
you.'" From there, "Move into a little list of your experience
and accomplishments. Write about some of the interesting things you've
done in the last ten years-give them a reason to want to talk to you."
Finally, it's time to conclude with your request-a meeting, a favor,
whatever.
One younger worker who has discovered the importance of email is Seth
Hopkins. Hopkins, 27, is a practicing attorney in Lake Charles, LA,
who is also the founder and president of WriteMySpeech.com, a speech writing
service. In both of his professions, Hopkins is unequivocal about one
thing: he'd much rather deal with his clients and contacts by email.
"For my speech writing business, most of the clients I deal with
I've never even spoken with by phone, to say nothing of regular mail,"
which only comes into play when they send payment, says Hopkins.
"Probably about ninety percent of my speech writing business comes
to me directly over the Internet, and that's the only way I have to
deal with them and develop business." For his "day job,"
working on tort cases at his family's legal shop, the Hopkins Law Firm,
Hopkins seldom uses e-mail to develop new business "Because when
you're an attorney, you're much more geographically restricted-being
able to reach the world doesn't do you much good if you're only admitted
to the bar in one or two states."
Nevertheless, once he's dealing with a client, Hopkins would "much
rather do consulting with them via email, if it's at all possible."
It's much more practical, Hopkins says, "than playing phone tag
all day long or spending my time and the client's time drafting formal
letters."
Hopkins is also able to accumulate much better records of discussions
that in the past would have likely taken place over the phone. Surprisingly,
he's also found that many older attorneys, whom one would expect to
be more staid about such things, agree with him: "I know one woman,
a lawyer in her forties, and she prefers to do just about everything
by email, too."
Indeed, Hopkins is something of a self-confessed email addict, and
relates bitterly the story of the time he was stuck in New Orleans for
a night without Internet access-losing two potential speech writing clients
as a result. But despite his enthusiasm, he's aware that there are still
many people in older generations who are resistant to using email for
business, legal or otherwise.
Seth says that his father (and boss), Jim Hopkins, "probably gets
more emails from me than from everybody else combined. He's definitely
one of those people who sees it as a tool for recreation, and not much
else-though I think he's the exception to the rule."
Even if Hopkins' father is a rare case, and workers of all ages have
embraced email to some degree or another-that doesn't mean younger workers
should ignore what their seniors have to say on the subject. More careful
email use can help their own efforts to get ahead with the old guard,
at the same time that it helps them operate more efficiently.
If you're smart about it, you can get a lot done, because you don't
need to do follow-up memos to things that have already been agreed upon
in email. Still, I think every now and then it would be nice to hold
an 'email-free day.
Staff Review by: Joseph (Joe) Kran, Lawrence (Larry) Maglin, Walter
Sonyi, Jr. and Rick Spann
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