The September 2005 edition of Inc. hit my mailbox this afternoon and in keeping with my usual routine I rifled through it as quickly as I could looking for the best articles.

One article hit home with me. Lost in translation by Alison Stein Wellner. I’m a fan of Ms. Wellner’s Inc. articles, but this one really hit close to home for me. The article was about the growing epidemic in our culture to do everything via text message, email and anything else we can do to avoid contact with one another.

The article lead off with a story about company who was trying to solve the email-BlackBerry-text messaging problem.

When employees report to work on Friday’s at Roberts Golden Consulting in San Francisco, they’re greeted with a gentle reminder from president Sara Roberts: Remember today is No Email Friday.

…Too much email, says Roberts, makes it hard to build rapport, and that threatens to derail effective business relationships. “People hide behind email,” she says. “For just one day a week, I want to pick up the phone or talk to someone face-to-face.”

This article struck me because I often have the reluctance to just pick up the phone and call a prospect, client or co-worker, so rather I fire them off an email so that I don’t have to get involved in their day. I generally think I’m doing them a favor by “allowing them to get back to me at their own schedule” but the sad fact is that the majority of them would much rather have me on the phone to discuss the problem, idea or simply life.

It’s pretty simple - we are created beings who have a deep longing in our nature to be in community with one another and we need to be careful that our technological advances aren’t falsely fulfilling that longing. I once heard a Pastor say that the greatest and worst invention of all time was the garage door opener because it allows us to sneak into and out of our homes without ever having to make contact with our neighbors - as would’ve been the case of yesteryear.

The quote from Sara Roberts on “buliding rapport” was the most convicting for me. Our consulting business is established on relationships and without quality relationships there isn’t work. And in order to secure a quality relationship, like any good marriage or friendship, a certain amount of time and effort needs to be put into that relationship. The email is a very impersonal way of doing that. If I only sent my wife emails expressing my undying love for her she would grow weary of receiving them and desire more - and in the same way our clients (and yours) deserve better too.

So I encourage you - and myself - to take the challenge of putting email down a little more often and invest the time and energy into establishing relationships with people because at the end of life that is really all that will matter.

RSS 2.0 | Comment