April 2008 Archives

Today I had every intention of blogging one thing but then the Mavericks at Work post today (which reminded me of an earlier Penelope Trunk post) changed my mind.  Both of which reminded me of my preservice teaching experiences over a decade ago.

When I was a student teacher, I remember my student teacher supervisor using the aphorism, "Success breeds success.  Failure breeds failure."  No, he wasn't trying to stereotype children based on their parentage; he we trying to tell us that if we provided opportunities for our students to be successful they would want to keep succeeding.  Conversely, if the system were set up for early failure, they would repeatedly fail.

Some people prefer to multitask.  Some prefer to unitask. Some, who multitask should unitask, and vice versa.  Our technology today is really set up with the multitasker in mind; our meetings set up for the unitasker.

Who am I?  I'm the multitasker. On caffeine. Who doesn't sleep.

I am always wary of injecting politics into my nonpolitical writing because something about hearing a differing opinion makes people shut down entirely, discounting all of your ideas.  However, the disastrous infusion of politics + family gathering has monopolized my thoughts so much this weekend that I feel compelled to share my reflections, at my on risk, of course.

Christopher Long recently posted on the voting tendencies of the younger generation in the recent primary and linked to an interesting article that offered a possible explanation for the demographics.  Based on my own experiences this weekend, I'd like to offer some of my own observations.

I mentioned before that I'm not a Gen Y and I'm at the tail end of Gen X.  Just as Jim Leous noted that younger voters not having a land line has had an influence on polling numbers, other trends in communications and technology are affecting the election.

While I'm not quite in the text-messaging, land-line category of people, there is one technology and media use pattern that applies to me that makes all the difference between me and my relatives: I don't have cable.  I don't get the paper.

I'm continuing my series based on Bob Sutton's post "Polly LaBarre on Jargon Monoxide" for the following series of posts. (For my first post on this topic, go here.)

How can I reduce my own Jargon Monoxide emissions?

In my previous posts I've defined what Jargon Monoxide is, how to detect it, and what its symptoms are.  Now, I'd like to talk about what you can do to help.  Here's how you can reduce overall Jargon Monoxide emissions:

• Don't ignite it. - Sometimes we need language to describe a niche topic.  It's when niche becomes clique, or communication is used as form of excommunication that we're are not longer using healthy language, whether or not we are aware of it.  As a trusted colleague of mine, Natalie Harp, advises us to "recognize and foster good intentions behind jargonization.  Then head it off at the pass by not adopting it."

  
  

• Don't inhale. - Just because someone—a vendor, an IT person, a lecturer—is venting jargon into the room, that does not mean you need to sit there and breathe it all in.  Stop the speaker.  Ask questions.  Chances are, this may be the first time the speaker has really even thought about his/her own words.  I know another colleague,who not only gave me this example, but is also exemplifies it.  (If you've ever been to a meeting with Robin Smail, you know what I mean.)  Instead of accepting Jargon Monoxide at face value, like the naked emperor staring us all in the face, she stares at it wide-eyed and asks the questions that none of us dare.
  

  
  

• Don't propagate it. - If you must use a term, define it.  However, there are jargon-free alternatives like visual aids (like images, diagrams, charts,  and graphs) and analogies that go a long way in describing complex concepts.  For example, this entire Jargon Monoxide series has been an analogy built on Carbon Monoxide/Safety PSAs.  For another interesting analogy—extended metaphor to be specific—see Natalie, Robin, Andrew Calvin and I, compare Web authoring to fashion ("What Not to Wear on the Web") at this year's Web Conference.

I'm continuing my series based on Bob Sutton's post "Polly LaBarre on Jargon Monoxide" for the following series of posts. (For my first post on this topic, go here.)

What are the symptoms of Jargon Monoxide poisoning?

In my first post I assumed that exposing your audience to high levels of Jargon Monoxide could be dangerous. So here the symptoms of Jargon Monoxide poisoning:

• Audience Fatigue - Prolonged exposure to Jargon Monoxide may reduce it's original intended "awe" factor.  Speakers, regardless of whether their goals were to communicate or simply to make an overall favorable impression, may fail when overuse jargon.

  
  

• Blurred Vision - If an organization is polluted with Jargon Monoxide, the language is unclear.  Thus, the mission statements, the vision statements, the goals, the values, the philosophies, the actions, the meetings, are really about semantics.  (If you've been to a meeting where you've split more hairs about the wording of what you were going to to that what you should do, who should do it, and how or when it should be done than actually doing it, then  you know you've been huffing the Jargon Monoxide a wee bit too long.)

  
  

• Decreased Consciousness - If an entire community is poisoned with Jargon Monoxide, there is an organization-wide decreased consciousness.  Real discussions cease.  Innovation and creativity disappear as people become lethargic.

  
  

• Social Photophobia - It's hard to enlighten a Jargon Monoxide poisoned environment and innovate.  People are uncomfortable illuminating their real ideas.  Instead they shade it in multisyllabic meaningless phrasing.

I'm continuing my series based on Bob Sutton's post "Polly LaBarre on Jargon Monoxide" for the following series of posts. I'm going to stray from the original and have a lot of fun with it today! (For my first post on this topic, go here.)

How can I detect Jargon Monoxide?

Jargon Monoxide, like it's deadly counterpart Carbon Monoxide is colorless and tasteless, but here are some potential sources of it (from my own personal experience and using my own made-up jargon just for kicks):

• Chemical Warfare - the deliberate use of Jargon Monoxide as an offensive maneuver to defend one's intellectual territory.  The result is that the audience is fearful of challenging the speaker's authority on his/her subject area.

  
  

• Fossil Fueling - unintentional Jargon Monoxide poisoning by speakers whose comfort levels in new technology, the changing world, or topics outside of their area of expertise causes them to cling to their predefined set of terms, anecdotes, arguments, and so on, much like your distant relatives cling to a handful of old stories about you as a child when they run into you at a reunion every five years to pretend they know you very well.

  
  

• Improper Ventilation- when your environment is lacking in fresh ideas and you are becoming so immersed in a Jargon Monoxide culture that you fail to recognize, you use, and you even share jargon which pervades and further intoxicates the community.  (I mean look at what I just wrote.  Couldn't I have said it in a much simpler way? Even "Jargon Monoxide" is just the my favorite term of the week that I'm all about be blogging, tweeting, sharing, dropping into conversation, and turning into Jargon Monoxide itself—oh, Irony!)

Thank Bob Sutton's post "Polly LaBarre on Jargon Monoxide" for the following series of posts for the week.

What is Jargon Monoxide?

Jargon Monoxide, as I am inferring from the post, is "hollow", "interchangeable" phraseology used by executives (in Polly's example), but it could be applied to alpha geeks, academics, marketing folk, etc.

Some examples from the post include:

• value added
• competitive advantage
• distinctive competence
• monetize

Other bloggers who caught Bob Sutton's post added their own examples.  Here are some from The Opinionated Marketers:

• synergy
• incentivize
• solution based
• customer-centric

Is Jargon Monoxide dangerous?

While Sutton's post does not explicitly state the dangers of Jargon Monoxide, he does contrast LaBarre's description of Jargon Monoxide with her description of "mavericks [who] are so effective at inspiring innovation".

From this information, I am assuming that exposing your audience to high levels of Jargon Monoxide could choke the innovation, inspiration and creativity out of them.

As I pulled my car into to my driveway at the end of such a beautiful day yesterday, I was reminded of the loss of a good person.  Ryan Ballas and I worked together from June 2006 to September 2007.  Sometimes I wish you would know ahead of time that on the last day you see someone, it is the last day. That Fall, Ryan would become very ill, and by winter he would be hospitalized.

It was not easy to get to know Ryan.  Maybe he just had a better filter between his head and mouth than I do.  Or maybe his illness made him protective of what he shared with others.  Those who did take the time to know him, though, knew him to be a good person and loyal friend. If you got him going on his favorite topics, you could have a long IM chat.

One month ago today, my friend Ryan passed away. It was hard for me to accept that Ryan died at only 33, never getting the chance to work full time in IT, never dropping that filter long enough for all of the office to get to know him better, never getting the chance to see one more beautiful Spring day.

But dropping that filter was never Ryan's thing; it's mine.  He never told any of us about his illness.

After perusing my previous post, I noticed that while most of the time I have my act together and exude something resembling confidence, I didn’t want my readership—which consists thus far to my knowledge of some close friends—to assume that I am—or at least that I perceive myself as—an infallible being—or at the very least, some superior authority.

So to that end, I have decide to break my single-day of writer’s block—single day is writer’s block to someone who is typically a blabbermouth as this readership of friends will attest—with a partial confessional of some of the mistakes I have made in the past. Here are my three whopping “Original Sins of Interpersonal Skills”.

As an ex-Catholic, ex-Lutheran, lapsed-Episcopalian, I’m not sure how well this will go, but what the heck, bless me, Readers, for I have sinned…

I have to say that if there are two books that I really bought into completely, they'd be Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and Robert Sutton's The No Asshole Rule.  Carnegie's book covers how to be nice; Sutton's covers why organizations should be less tolerant of, er, "jerk" behaviors.

In addition to these sources, there are a number of resources, training sessions and workshops on how to communicate effectively, or on netiquette, or other related topics.

Yet, even with all these opportunities for enlightenment, I have witnessed otherwise-intelligent people read the books, attend the trainings, and still not get it.  Why? Are they unaware of their behavior?  It could be.  Or do they not see the value of courtesy? If so, allow me to make the case against the "nice guys finish last" mentality...

I recently posted on my parenting blog, Caution! May Contain Small Parts, on what I called Technological White Space.

The idea is that, like content on a page, technology is best used (and not used) strategically to give users a more focused experience.

Technological White Space would be the areas where we strategically eliminate or coordinate the use of technology to prevent that feeling of technological overload even the most tech savvy get, which is akin to reading a dense, content-heavy Web page.

To add some much-needed white space, we could:

• find the best tech tool for the job and use it consistently.
• don't use a tools for the sake of using them; it's like filling a Web page with meaningless filler items.
  
• coordinate our uses of technology across departments and throughout the university, rather than choosing to reinvent the wheel by using our own separate tools that overwhelm users.
• reduce the instances of a particular technology if you want to force separate users of those instances to collaborate/coordinate.

I was at the Commission for Women's Second Annual Awards Luncheon today.

I co-chair the Wage Equity Ad-Hoc Issues Committee for the Commission for Women (CFW).  Our committee was charged with studying wage equity issues and looking into commission responses related to wage equity. One of the areas related to equity for on which I want to focus is information transparency.  (I won't go into to all the ways we'd like to go about doing this. If really you want to know, join CFW/the Wage Equity committee as an appointed or affiliate member.)

Before I talk about information transparency, let me state that my opinion is mine and mine alone (unless you share it, and I welcome you to reply with yours).  My words are in no way some official opinion of Penn State, CFW, Wage Equity, the Kauffman family, the Massaro family for that matter, or any other individual besides those that may exist in my head to rationalize what I say...

Now what was I saying? Ah yes, information transparency.

They say knowledge is power.  If that's true, how are you choosing to use it? Do you share power with every one in a virtual town hall or...

Okay, so there are a lot of articles out there about Gen Y and even about their Boomer parents.  The thing is, being a Gen Xer, I can't help but feel like a middle child left out of the discussion...

So here I am a thirtysomething in the workforce.  I'm not entirely a digital native.  (Ready for my secret confession: I don't text.)  Still I get somewhat irked by unitask activities and processes that could be rethought and replaced with newer more efficient means of getting things done.

Some want change to happen fast and don't stop to ask the important questions like: Why change? How will this be useful? How to we get people to embrace change?  What will we be losing by adopting this change?  Others dig in their heels and refuse to take any risk, forgetting that stagnation in a changing world can in itself be a risk.

I'm dying to see us use proven collaborative tools do what they do best, but we have a tough struggle ahead of us.   I'm okay with that.  What bothers me is when those resistant to change make it personal with the seven words I detest: When-you-get-to-be-my-age.   

Are they implying that our desire to improve the organization is reckless and immature?  Does a desire to make my organization efficient make me naive or childish?  

Trying to get your organization to embrace change?  Apparently the magic number is 5%.

Back in February, my Dvorak feed called my attention to this interesting article: "Sheep in human clothing – scientists reveal our flock mentality". In it, scientists at the University of Leeds found that it takes just 5% of the population to change the behavior of the remaining population.

They conducted a series of experiments where people walked randomly in a large hall, but selected a few who were told to walk in a specific manner.  It took only 5% walking in a pattern to influence the majority of random-walkers.

While this study showed that 5% was the magic number to influence people acting without direction, I expect it may require more effort to get people to change course.  Perhaps it will be useful in introducing new technology in areas where there is no set direction already.

I'm was the middle of reading The Culture of Collaboration when I made this weekend's post.  I realized that the Wiki Wading tip #2 ties in with some of the ideas thus far in the book.

In the first chapter "Climate Shift: Embracing Rich, Real-Time Collaboration", Evan Rosen proclaims, "The inbox culture is dead."  Our world is changing so rapidly that the old model of sending, forwarding and replying through traditional inboxes and even email inboxes creates delays. The turn-around time on collaborative projects and decision making is much faster in real-time.

However, in order for us to make the jump from the inbox to collaborative tools requires a cultural change.  Rosen notes that culture often trails technical capabilities.  Information hoarding--intentional or unintentional--is part of the inbox culture than needs to give way to collaboration.

How to we change our inbox culture to the collaborative one Rosen advocates?  I suppose we should start by looking at why information hoarding occurs in the first place:

Okay, okay, it's Spring and maybe a tad too early for this metaphor yet--or is it?

It may already be late.  Your group's been sitting by the Web 2.0 pool watching all the other kids jump in.  There were the early adopters, dare-devils who jumped in with an attention-grabbing cannonball--or the less-successful belly flop.  When they hit the water for better or worse, what rippled and splashed from that entrance created a reaction.

After wiping the water from their faces, the next round went in.  Did they do it because they were looking for something refreshing?  Did they want to join a larger collective knowledge base?  Or did they do it so they wouldn't be left on the outside, cold, all wet the wave those on the inside were making?

Does it matter?   They're in.

Which brings us to your group.  You've been sitting at the side of the pool long enough.  But how to start?  How do you, the cautious ones, make an entry that makes you comfortable.

As you think about where to start and what to put into your wiki, consider the following:

I was at the University Wide Training Committee meeting yesterday and we were on one of my favorite soapbox topics (wikis as training tools), another interesting topic came up:

While some people have the jobs, the time, the interest, or the background to jump onto new technology, we still have a group of people who, for many varying reasons, still need basic technology skills training.

How do we serve the people who still need basic user training?  Is Web 2.0 tech out of the question when someone still needs to understand what the Web is?

Here are some of my observations on helping the novice: