My CEO Life

Interesting post. I see lots of value in instant messaging as a communication tool for business and have always found it incredibly useful. As a manager it’s also a useful “presence” tool when employees are working remotely or telecommuting.

MSN itself is not ideal as an instant messenging solution. The main reason is that all communications over MSN are unencrypted and sent over the internet. So when people are discussing business-sensitive issues, they’re potentially exposing them to malicious snoopers.
The other reason is related; you’re also sending all your business communications through servers owned by another business (Microsoft).

Happily, there are alternatives available such as Jabber which is free, can be run on a server within your corporate firewall and can be easily encrypted. Jabber can even be configured to act as a gateway to other IM systems (such as MSN messenger) so that employees can communicate with others outside of the organisation’s network (and while that may be friends and family, it may also be clients and contacts).

I agree completely that Messenger is a great communication tool and businesses should look at programs like this and Cisco’s unified communication solutions to facilitate greater communication within businesses.

However the issue that I face as an Operational Manager is that people loose the ability to pick up the telephone.

Whilst increasing communication, instant messaging means people decrease their communication skills. I find that people short cut processes that are critical, rather than providing someone with an email with information and an attachment, they simply instant message people. Instant messaging means that there is no reference to look back at, no record of what happened, in the case of customers- nothing to support that action was taken.

I have had to swap out my Manager hat and put on my Kindy teacher hat before and break up fights that have happened with staff as one of them felt that a smiley face or a clever emoticon would fix the offence that they caused by speaking instant message rather than the clearer communication that they would have used if they sent an email or picked up the telephone.

Personally, I find that people are trying to use instant messaging to communicate, thinking that it is quick and effective and missing the fact that the human touch is extremely important.

I even had a vendor instant message me the other day to see what I thought of the proposal that he had just sent me! Needless to say, his manager was not happy to hear from me!

I use instant messaging to communicate simple messages to people and am very reliant on the phone and email to communicate more important or longer messages.

There are brilliant things about instant messaging and there are great dangers as well which I think that business need to be mindful of with by being ok with instant messaging. At running the risk of seeming and feeling very old, businesses currently run the risk of teenagers coming into the work force speaking instant message or sms and being provided with the tools to continue that way and then when you need them to construct an email, they really dont have any idea where to start .

I don’t find that it is a trust issue but a communication issue.

Simon,

My only concern would be security of the MSN Messenger. In a past I witnessed a few epidemics of MSN ID theft. It’s not that easy to steal corporate e-mail. Stolen MSN account can be traded at hundreds of hacker’s boards and used for social engineering attack even before the victim realised the reason why he/she can’t login. From my experience, Skype is more secure (I can’t support my assumption with data). That’s from technical side.

From human side – 100% agree with you. Any artificial and unnecessary differentiation between employees (e.g. personal offices, redundant vertical layers of ranking, timesheets, fancy forms, and yes – selective approach to communication tools and internet access) works as BIG demotivator.

In my opinion – the great success of communities working on open source projects is freedom. Despite of lack of managerial experience, crucial skills (finance, marketing) and absence of funding they are competing with software giants like Microsoft, Sun and Oracle. How?

Mutual trust and respect is the real manager and the leader here. Different philosophy. And companies which adopted it (like Google, to a degree of course) are thriving.

Trish, I would disagree with you on that one.

For some jobs human touch (voice, personal meeting) is important, but for too many other people is not. Believe me or not, but I never met some of my friends in real life. There are thousands of people who are falling in love over internet and getting married then. Weird? Well, some people are different. If it doesn’t directly damage a business, what is a problem here?

I personally prefer written communications – MSN or e-mail – due to my terrible accent. Does it make me less efficient in my job and worse professional? Honestly, no offence, but if the manager is the only one who doesn’t feel comfortable using MSN in a team of his/her subordinates… who should make an effort to change?

Reference to look back – Messenger history is even more user friendly than Outlook and search works faster. What about references to the phone conversations?

Please, don’t take it personally Just expressing my opinion.

Instant Messenger (Windows Live, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk etc tec) are all old hat. If companies are worried about IM they should be in absolute panic over technologies like Twitter or even Facebook status updates, where one disgruntled employees message can reach a whole lot more people than IM. And in a gen-Y workforce, IM IS the phone.

Great post.
I believe that managers blocking IM tools are doing it primarily based on lack of understanding and fear of loosing the control, not on security issues.

@mark: absolute correct, imagine ‘status updates’ in an organisation, that should:
1. stop questions like “where is Jones today?”
2. build a much stronger understanding of what people are doing –> creates a tighter team

Hi all,

A couple of remarks.

Security … yes, and no. The danger of transmitting confidential data through E-mail is much higher, and more easily exploited. How much confidential data is exchanged daily through non-secure E-mail channels?

How would a manager react if an employee received 25 private phone calls a day? How would he react in face of 25 private MSN messages?

I agree with Simon that you should put trust into your people – but this only works if they are trustworthy. Some just are not.

Alain,

The best proven method of managing untrustworthy people is a slavery.

But seriously, today everyone can chose the jobs. If person decided to work for you and succeeded in effort to be employed, what other proof of trustworthiness do you need?

In most cases rookies are very proactive and motivated. But sometimes in a few weeks they see that “exciting cutting-edge project” is a boring customisation of some technical legacy, or “fantastic best-selling product” is the worst on a market and managers care more about politics than delivery. People are not happy and they don’t trust you any longer. I worked for such company, left in 10 months and regret that I wasted ~1% of my life.

Trust is a MUTUAL feeling. If you lost trust of people, you can’t trust them. Simple.

The key to trust – is honesty and straightforwardness. It starts from advertising a job on a website. You need a coder for support? Don’t write that you need a senior developer, solution architect, etc. Don’t ask for extra skills, which you don’t need in your project. Explain the nature of the job and company on the interview, never sugarcoat it. The wrong person will leave. The right one will stay, respect your candour, trust you and you can trust her/him. Maintain honesty with your team, be open, be one of them and voila – you have 100% trustworthy people working for you!

Of course, high salary can be a real applicant’s motivator… That’s why I think, with pay rates well above industry average you can eventually hire wrong people. Reward should come not from high salary, but from bonuses or equity in case of startup. But that is a different story.

Simon, sorry for flooding too much Interesting topic.