Startup: An Insider's Guide to Launching and Running a Business (20 page)

Do you see the difference here in the text? This may seem like a joke, but honest to Pete, people (both men and women) always responded nicely when our e-mail persona was “Valerie.” It was still the same customer support folks—usually single, geeky men trying to get through a mountain of requests—but when we metamorphosed them all into our perky customer support princess, the sailing got a lot smoother. “She” saved us tens of thousands of dollars. Thanks Val!

My take on the psychology behind this transformation is that women trust women more than men in an anonymous relationship through e-mail. And men tend to be polite to women in this kind of online situation because they are thinking, “She might be cute.” (That’s just tacky, isn’t it?)

_________________

The Pen Is …

I don’t like e-mail for communicating with my team. Don’t get me wrong—I use e-mail every day. But when I have to communicate something complex, important, or of sufficient value that it really
matters
to me, e-mail usually won’t do. Let me list the reasons why:

• It is impersonal.
  
• It is easy to miss, when it comes in with a hundred other messages in a day.
  
• It is hard to provide nuance in e-mail.
  
• Complex relationships or processes are hard to describe in e-mail.
  
• E-mail is easy to ignore.
  
• E-mail is discarded easily.
  

So what is the alternative these days? I use … wait for it …
a pen and paper
! Can you believe it? It is absolutely fantastic. This new discovery was so good in fact that I might have to go out and buy some stock in a portfolio of pen companies. I think this might catch on.

So what exactly is so great about pen and paper?

It is personal. When I put together ideas on paper, such as in a to-do list, a drawing, or a process diagram, it is clearly a personal communication from me (a human being) to the intended audience (another human being). This is often lost with digital communications, since they are abstracted away in the handoff between a device and another device.

It is hard to miss because it is a physical object. I have to walk over to my addressee and hand it to him or her. This usually is accompanied by eye contact, and maybe even an exchange of words. Oh my, how quaint!

It is relatively easy to convey nuance in a handwritten missive. The handoff of the paper from my hand to theirs allows me to couple the written record with some finger-pointing and explanation: “The process starts here and wiggles over here and then results in
this
…” snapping my fingers for emphasis. Nuance abounds.

Complex processes and relationships are the perfect applications for a drawing with annotations, plus a verbal explanation. It does not get any better unless you are ready to produce a documentary for television. I am thinking of
Frontline
or
Nova
. I don’t have that kind of time or budget, so my pen plus paper plus voice are going to be my choice.

A handwritten note and walk-by are hard to ignore. I am standing there. Go ahead then—try to ignore me. It won’t work.

A handwritten diagram is apparently harder to discard than an e-mail. I have been writing these diagrams and handing them to my team for quite a while now, and the pattern is that people
keep them
. These diagrams get taped to walls, left out on desks where they can be referenced, and carried to meetings. They are real
artifacts
with a human intention behind them (almost gift-like, I suppose). That makes them hard to throw away. This is a good thing. Fantastic in fact.

• I can digitize these and keep them as permanent documentation on our company wiki.
  
• Save an archive version on your computer.
  
• Send them by e-mail anywhere in the world. The iPhone (or any other modern phone) has a good enough camera to digitize the thoughts.
  
• Also, our company printer does a quick scan to PDF format, if we need to.
  

In summary, if you want to communicate effectively, convey greater complexity, and have your information understood better and retained and referenced for a longer time, put the keyboard aside and pull out some white paper and a good-old pen.

_________________

Communication Frequency and Duration

Many companies and organizations have meeting-centric cultures and devote an inordinate amount of time to scheduled and structured meeting events. This can result in employee distraction, demotivation, and overcommunication. As a manager, one of the most important tasks on my to-do list is to match the level of communication to every person and to our task load. As in the tale of the Three Bears, there is too little, too much, and just right. I do my best to hit just the right mix of information sharing to keep my team optimally engaged and informed.

There are a number of variables at your disposal in managing the communication in your team. Among the most important of them is a decision about how you structure the regular and day-to-day communication with your employees. I focus on the following variables: duration and frequency.

• Duration
  : How long do you spend with employees when you communicate with them? How in-depth do you get when you meet?
  
• Frequency
  : How frequently do you communicate with each team member? (Once a minute? Once an hour? Once a day? Once a year?)
  

I will tailor these variables to each different employee. Employee experience, personality, and respective task complexity are all different, so my communication style is different for each. My personal style is to touch base daily with each employee for 30 seconds to 5 minutes, and then facilitate meetings between employees or the whole team as needed. I end up being a communications facilitator for each member of the team.

This is great for me as a manager, in that I get a daily personal update on all of the following:

• Employee well-being
  : Are they happy, engaged, and productive?
  
• Task status
  : Are we on track?
  
• Facilitator tasks
  : What do I need to do to move each project element along? Schedule specific meetings between individuals or the whole team? Remove obstacles? Get resources? Change the task specs?
  

This also allows me to be a boundary spanner, with intimate knowledge on business processes from product design, marketing, engineering, and sales.

_________________

The Curse of the Expert

Since you are dealing with your business and your particular specialty every day (and have probably done so for years), you are very, very close to it. You have a context that is rich and nuanced from which to understand it. This is great for doing well in your specialty and communicating about it with other experts.

However, this expertise and close-up perspective can be a serious problem if you are trying to communicate with customers or non-experts about what you do. Invariably, you
will
have to communicate with people that don’t know as much about your specialty as you do—that is probably why they are hiring you or buying your product. When you do communicate with non-experts, make sure that you recognize the need to recontextualize your approach to make sense for them.

Establish Context

I often see experts give a loving and heartfelt explanation of their technology, and start off by launching right into the details: “What we’ve been doing is focusing on the chemical structure of the bonding agents is such that light and heat degradation is minimized, and maximum rigidity is exhibited within a mere three hours of curing time.”

OK, so what are we talking about here? We have failed to establish a context to help your audience to get onto the same page with you before you get into the details. Set the context first. Then get specific. You cannot assume that people will be able to follow. Start shallow and work your way into deeper water once you have made sure that your audience is following you.

Here’s an example of establishing context: “My partner James spent four years at MIT working on polymers, and we have started a company to commercialize them. We are working on aviation-quality glues for use in aircraft manufacturing.” Then get into the details.

I cannot tell you how often failures to establish context come up at my company, even after months and years of correcting it. When we write marketing materials, the first drafts often assume context has already been established with the reader on one point or other. One of the most frequent problems that needs to be ironed out is the establishing of context before diving into details.

_________________

Put a Handle on It

I spend a fair amount of time listening to pitches from startups—software, Internet, science, and engineering companies mostly. Here is a common theme: “With ywidget.com you can combine multiple social media paradigms in one context, with platform-agnostic messaging when you’re on the go, and a centralized interface that allows you to organize your lifestyle like never before.”

Wow, I have no idea what this means.

I hear this type of pitch several times a month from startups that are really excited about how they are going to change people’s lives through their new, innovative product. The problem with this is that I don’t understand it. I know that there is some “messaging” going on, and something “social,” but not much more. I cannot explain their business to myself, let alone explain it to others—which is what I would have to be able to do if I were to consider their impassioned communication to have been successful.

Lets imagine a scenario together: you are going on vacation to Europe for six weeks. In preparation for your trip, you have arranged all of your travel items on the floor of your bedroom. Take a moment to visualize what
you
would lay out the night before your flight as you get ready. Stuff arranged for your trip might include jeans, shirts, underwear, a toothbrush, toothpaste, socks, traveler’s checks, a laptop computer, a charger cable, a cell phone, a charger for your phone, two books to read on the plane, a camera, a belt, dress shoes, running shoes, sandals, and more.

Imagining all of these items, what are you going to do in order take them with you? You are going to
put them all into something that has a handle on it
. A suitcase will work just fine, won’t it? It has a handle on it for a reason: it is easy for you to pick up and to hand to the guy at the check-in counter at the airport. It is also easy for that guy to hand it to someone else, and so on and so forth. Your stuff can only go with you if you make it easy for you, your family, and various members of the travel industry to pick up, hold, and carry.

Your business messaging is like that assortment of valuable and important items the night before your trip. If you want your potential customers to be able to carry your idea and hand it off to others, it needs to have a handle on it.

Put a handle on it, even if that means that you leave out important parts of your story when you communicate to others. That is called
brand sacrifice
. It is better to convey the critical essence of your business and have it remembered by your audience than to throw the kitchen sink at them and have them duck and run for cover.

The preceding pitch could be rephrased as, “ywidget.com is all your social messaging, organized in one place.” That is something that I could recall after a day or a week, and something that I could pass on to others with fidelity. These are the hallmarks of good communication.

_________________

Speech Markers

When talking on a detailed subject, I suggest adopting a habit wherein you provide your listeners frequent
context markers
as your discourse progresses. This helps them to accurately follow and interpret what you are saying—and that is, after all, the objective of communication. Here are some examples of markers:

• I am going to change the subject. Is that OK?
  
• I am making an assertion now; this is just a preliminary idea, so please feel free to challenge it.
  
• This is a question, not a request. I am not asking for you to do this, but am just asking if it would be reasonable.
  
• I want to make sure we are on the same page, so tell me if this is right. You said …
  

Using communication management mechanisms like these is in effect providing a parallel layer of information alongside the content of the conversation. By marking transitions in topic, confirming your understanding, and explicitly labeling the status of topic points, you reduce the chances of miscommunication. Context markers are an effective strategy for enhancing the flow and comprehension of information in any complex or technical conversation.

Strategic Thinking

Strategy
is a charismatic word for
thinking ahead and acting in such a way as to optimize your outcomes over a long period of time
. I like optimizing outcomes and so do you. I spent over a decade as a martial arts instructor, and I can guarantee you that in that kind of environment, everybody wants to optimize outcomes. On the Judo mat,
strategy
means getting out of a bad situation in one piece. To support this desirable outcome, think about the following:
¹