She wants one number to call. Why? Because
she wants the most productive way to get in touch with you.
IM and Presence
We??™ve talked a lot about voice communication, but what about IM and presence? IM has taken
a much larger role in corporate communication, with a lot of that growth having to do with the
generation of working professionals coming into the workforce over the past decade. Without
realizing it, this generation has revolutionized the way we do business. Because many of these
workers grew up with IM, text messaging, blogs, and so on, they have come to expect this type
of ???instant??? and ???freeform??? communication in the workplace. In many cases, they actually
consider e-mail to be a very slow form of communication! So, how does this need for instant
gratifi cation help the workforce? Let me give you an example.
In a previous position, I was in constant communication with the CTO of my company.
He was a very nice person, but he was also very busy, and he often traveled between our fi ve
large regional offi ces, so communication with him was often diffi cult. I often had to play the
???phone call??? game, calling his desk line, cell number, desk line in other offi ces, and so on, to
try to hunt him down. In the end, if I could not reach him, I would simply shoot him an
e-mail and wait for a response. When I did get him on the phone, we both felt obligated to
have a ???polite??? conversation fi rst (???How??™s the weather in Boston? How are the kids? Did
you catch the Sox last night????), although we were both usually very busy.
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