What it takes to survive an information deluge.
From phone calls to faxes to e-mails, we have to handle more information and information sources than ever before. What are some of the skills we need to tackle this challenge? Find out.
Back in 1988 I managed to acquire my first cordless phone. I say ‘acquire’ because I begged my grandparents to let me have it (alright, I stole it). Now, these phones came complete with simulated wood grain, a handset shape that would make an ergonomic consultant want to kill themselves, and by far the most important feature, an extendable antenna.
Why was this feature so important? Without this antenna, your reception varied between “gentle white noise” and “raging thunderstorm”. Now, I was about 11 when I ‘acquired’ this setup, and naturally, I wanted to use this new toy of mine. Soon, my sister and I (who wanted in on the action) realized we didn’t have anyone to call with any relevant info. Naturally, the best thing to do was to call our family members and tell them all about the new phone. Twice.
“HEY I’M USING A PHONE WITHOUT WIRES ISN’T THAT AWESOME” [whip head around action] “HOLD ON MY SISTER IS CRYING ALL OF A SUDDEN AND SAYING THE ANTENNA HAS SMACKED HER IN THE FACE” “WHAT? The reception’s gotten better with the antenna up her nose? Huh…!”
Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve come a long way from the Coda Phone era, haven’t we? Now we have to take phone calls (both landline and cell), faxes, e-mails (and ohhhh..THE EMAILS) read the newspaper, watch the news, keep up with all those websites, maybe update ours, make sure our customers are contacted, and..and…[pantpantpant]
It’s a little much, isn’t it? Sometimes it seems like just one more piece of regular old snail mail’s enough to make you take an impromptu European vacation.
Back when we were in school (except for <audience member> because they were just “too cool” for that sort of thing), we got several earfuls of the old R’s – readin’, ritin’, and rithmetic’. Those are great skills, and we need them more than ever – but they aren’t enough. To keep up with these “multiple streams of information” (please don’t kill me Robert Allen), we need new skills. These come in the form of six S’, which I’ll be telling you about briefly today. These S’ are: Sortin’, Storin’, Searchin’, Spressin’, Savvyin’, and Speedin’.
Let’s get started with our first S – Sortin’. We must be able to take our streams and filter out what we don’t need, what we need for later, and what we need right now. For those latter two, we need to be able to file information where it needs to go. Quick! Where do you file a take out menu from a new restaurant, your insurance paperwork, and the kids’ gold star homework assignments go!? “Uh, Jeff, I don’t mean to brag, but they’re in my Big Stack of Papers I shall never sort.” WHAT?!
If you can’t or won’t sort through your multiple streams of information effectively, you are always going to be in perpetual firefighting mode when it comes time to look up what you need. This might be fine for you, but think of your customers – “Uh, sorry Mr. Jones, I’m still looking for that, haha, how about them Astros!” Sounds funny in Mr. Jones is one call away from your competitor.
The ability to sort through all the stuff you have coming into your life and actively be able to turn off whatever isn’t serving you is critical to keeping the flow of all that stuff to a manageable level. How many of you have magazine subscriptions that you got and now you never read? How many of you waste any time on junk mail or phone calls? Did you know there are ways to cut back if not eliminate these? Just try visiting Junkbusters.com.
Being able to control your streams is a key discipline, and that brings us to what we’re going to do with this info when we get it. We have to be able to put away the things from our multiple streams that we want to keep effectively, so our next skill to learn is storin’.
Storin’ sounds simple enough, and usually it is – put paper B into file B, put e-mail from Mr. Jones into the “Mr. Jones” folder. Sometimes the toughest part of storin’ is moving the piece of data from one place to the other. We’ve already done the work of figuring out where we need it to go; it’s more of a matter of getting it there.
Storin’ also refers to having an effective system for putting away the data from our streams you’ve decided to keep, then having the discipline to use it. Any system should be as simple as possible, and expandable.
Now that sortin’ and storin’ are out of the way, we need the ability to retrieve what we’ve put away for later use, as well as find specific information we don’t have. Searchin’ is our next critical skill.
If you’ve done your sortin’ and storin’ correctly, you don’t need too much effort to do searchin’ of your own materials. Let’s address the need to find information you don’t have. As many of you know, everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) is on the internet these days, which means you need to be good at finding the few things you do need. If someone tells you “ah, just Google that” and it makes you thinks “Goo-wha?” your searchin’ skills are out of date!
With these three skills, we’re about half done. The next S skill you need to have is spressin’ – or “expressing” (hey, if the original Rs were allowed to take liberties, then I am too).
To keep it short, we need to be able to speak, write, and perform in multiple media. It can be on the phone, via email, via video conference, or in person. Many of you need to be able to produce multiple media including product photos, audio products, and maybe even your own video recordings – and you need to be able to get these up on the web or sent to a potential client. On top of that, we need to be able to put in our personal touches so we set ourselves apart from the rest of the market.
That’s a little on spressin’; next up is savvyin’ and speedin’. In other words, we need to not only be good at what we do, but we need to be able to do it all FAST! “I’m not good with the computer” is no longer a valid excuse nowadays. “I’m not good with the computer” will make Mr. or Mrs. Jones wonder if you have it together elsewhere. They also don’t want to hear “Hold on, I’m looking for that…just a while longer…I swear I put your file here…ahhh..” NNNNNTTT! WRONG!
Twenty years later, my aunt has gotten a handle on many of these S Skills and she’s had her revenge several times over. (My sister is a bit more forgiving – I hope!) You see, she got her own toy – a digital camera. She also now has, you guessed it, grandchildren. Guess what I get in my e-mail inbox every other day? “Ooh, look at how cute they are!” Yes. I. Got. That. Eight. Years. Ago. Make. A. Web. Site. Already. ARRRRRGH.
