 Until
about 15 years ago, the way people consulted with each other was
through face-to-face meetings and visits (often impromptu,
spur-of-the-moment occurrences). When that was impossible, people
conversed by telephone, in real dialogue. Likewise, until about 15
years ago, the way people did research was to go and visit (or, if that
was not possible, telephone) the library and talk to the information
professional (IP) about what they needed, and then leave it to the IP
to get it.
With the advent of ubiquitous e-mail and Internet
access, that all changed and (yes I know I'm sounding like an old man)
usually not for the better.
E-mail is rarely the best way to
consult or converse with business colleagues. Too often, it has
replaced more effective face-to-face and telephone real-time
interactive conversations. Worse, it has allowed introverts and
arrogant people who believe their time is more valuable than others' to
duck real-time consultation and conversation entirely. The result:
degraded communication and decision-making.
Likewise,
disintermediated Internet searching is rarely the most effective way to
conduct research or to use non-IPs' time effectively. Too often, it has
allowed staff who are incompetent researchers to waste time browsing in
the wrong places and cutting and pasting data into poorly-synthesized
reports. The result: degraded research and analysis.
Organizations
that are aware of the dangers of misuse of e-mail and of amateur
Internet 'research' have tended to put in place restrictions on
inappropriate use of these technologies, and processes to actively
encourage face-to-face and real-time consultation and conversation and
the reintermediation of research through re-skilled IPs. Ironically,
this has resulted in information behaviours that substantially resemble
those of pre-Internet days.
So what can be done to make effective use of technologies to:
- enable people to 'walk down the hall' to talk with people who aren't down the hall, and
- enable reintermediated research by IPs even for people who are far from the corporate 'library'?
Many years ago, when e-mail and Internet access were just becoming the norm in business, I met a guy named Bill Buxton
(photo above), who was then with Alias Research. His passion was trying
to make virtual 'presence' imitate, as much as possible, physical
'presence', to get the technology to adapt to our preferred information
behaviours, instead of the other way around.
Bill's mantra was:
Ultimately,
we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design
are the "things" that we sell, rather than the individual, social and
cultural experience that they engender, and the value and impact that
they have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name.
To
that end, he had computer screens around a circular table in his
office, each showing the head and shoulders, and the computer desktop,
of one his meeting participants, so that virtual meetings were as
analogous as possible to 'real' meetings. He had another screen above
his office door with a picture of a door on it, that he could virtually
'open' or 'close' to signify whether he was, or was not, available for
impromptu e-consultations and e-conversations.
It was a little
hokey, but Bill was (and still is, in his new work) on the right track.
Scheduling systems like Outlook are fine for events of an hour or more
in length, but they don't work well for just-in-time (unscheduled and unschedulable)
consultations and conversation that last only a few minutes, yet which
are critical to effective decision-making and knowledge exchange.
Instant messaging has proven to be a useful stopgap (when users are
practiced enough to use it effectively) but it is still too slow and
lacking in the interactivity, body language and ability to 'see' what
the others in the conversation are looking at, that quick face-to-face
consultation permits.
What we could do is to add to IM an ability to:
- virtually 'knock', just-in-time, with an indication of how many minutes of the consultee's time we need,
- simply conference others into the conversation, and
- simply add voice, video and desktop-sharing capability to the IM conversation.
Then IM, instead of having to carry the conversation, would be used mostly to set up
the conversation, in a way analogous to the 'knock on the door' that is
used to set up a face-to-face just-in-time conversation ("do you have 5
minutes to resolve a problem we're having with…?"). Once the IM 'knock'
was accepted, the participants would then 'one-click' into a VoIP
conversation with video and desktop-sharing 'attached' to the
resizeable IM pop-up window. Voilà, Bill's virtual meeting, updated to the mobile, wireless workplace.
The same process could be used to consult with IPs about requests for research, and to review the research results with them.
The
advantages over e-mail are increased effectiveness (because the
conversation is real-time interactive and spoken, not written and
asynchronous), and improved context (because of the addition of aural,
visual and body-language 'clues').
This would not be difficult
to do with today's technology. Some organizations don't permit or are
unfamiliar with using IM, and others don't (yet) have ubiquitous,
wireless, audio and video transmission technologies. But these should
not be difficult hurdles. This could be the rare case where if you
built it they would come.
The
greater challenge with such an invention would be behavioural: the
resistance of introverts and some managers to being accessible
just-in-time, the way all of us were (had to
be) a generation ago. E-mail and e-scheduling software have helped make
it socially acceptable to be unavailable without a prior appointment.
The only way to overcome this is to demonstrate how a
technology-enabled return to impromptu real-time consultation and
intermediated research will improve work effectiveness, knowledge exchange, research and decision-making quality. We'll have to show people what they've been missing, starting with some pilot groups who 'get it'.
It
will take time and practice to relearn this lost skill of accommodating
requests for advice, information and insight on-the-fly. There were
always people, in the days before e-mail, who abused this
accommodation, and we'll have to relearn how to say 'no' to them. There
were always people who asked for five minutes and inarticulately
blathered through thirty, and we'll need to retrain them how to be
precise and concise.
But it will be worth it. Ubiquitous e-mail
and Internet access in organizations have created more problems than
they've solved, and it's time to rein them in to situations where their
use is appropriate and effective. To do so, we'll have to relearn some
old tricks, like how to consult, converse, communicate and research, professionally. It can't happen soon enough.
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