Podcast: The Impact of Disruptive Communication

In this Podcast Episode, we tackle the ultimate disruptor of our time. It disrupts our time and our thoughts. Email and video conferencing, were technological advances which was heralded to free us have actually enslaved us. So how can we wrest back control?

Who better to ask than Marc Powell, founder of Emailogic who has been advising businesses large and small on how to manage this phenomenon successfully.

Full Transcript

Steve Thomas  0:09 

Welcome to another Kredo podcast on the topic of disruption. My name is Steve Thomas. Kredo is a PR and digital communications agency that specializes in the launch and growth of disruptive technologies worldwide. We address trust as a key issue and place it at the heart of our campaigns. Today, we tackle perhaps the largest disrupter in current times communication itself. Since the rise of the World Wide Web, in the 1990s, human interaction has been transformed out of all recognition. From the dawn of the internet, everyone was energized by the speed and immediacy of messaging in business. The power of the inbox was vaunted to revolutionize business for good. One day, we would work from anywhere. Three decades later, and it's a different story. Email, apps and video meetings are blamed as a major cause of stress with intrusion, distraction, and even addiction as a consequence. So what went wrong with this disruptive technology? Who better doors than Mark Powell, who launched Email ogic in 1998, and has offered training and consultancy to the world's largest corporations on how to manage digital communication. He saves individual companies 16 days of wasted time. per annum Hello, Mark, and welcome to disruptive Talk.

Marc Powell  1:55 

Thank you. Absolute pleasure to be here.

Steve Thomas  1:58 

Tell me about the world that you entered into ... where you'd come from, because I think you were an engineer, but you're trained engineer, but didn't you go into acting? Yeah.

Marc Powell  2:11 

So I was, I was an engineering student. And after three years, I had enough, I knew that I was never going to be an engineer. And I went and trained as an actor. And then I was acting, and I needed a part time job or a job, I could step in and out of, when I needed to, as many actors do need. And I got a part time job with a friend of mine who had a computer company. And suddenly, I was in the world of computers, which, at that time, in the 80s, computers were a good thing to get into. If you got into into computers within three or four years, you know, whatever bit of computers, you'd be at you, you'd be doing okay, you know, you know, you knew you were safe with computers, because it was very early on. I wasn't into programming, this was a a, it was a dealership. So I was into sort of hardware and software and making people's machines work and wiring things up and networking and, and things like that. But I suppose the thing that struck me and pulled me the most was, it wasn't actually about computers, it was about the people. And to the point where we provide maintenance contracts on computers, and the people who called us out the most and were the rudest and their computers broke the most were the same people who'd hit their computers if they didn't work across the room, and they'd be the ones who who'd call you most often also have a go at you. And their computers would would break down the most often the people who would throw their toys out of the pram when things didn't work.

Steve Thomas  4:06 

So how did that translate them into training? Because that's that's the route it eventually took.

Marc Powell  4:14 

Yeah, and over time, I did less axing and more computer. And I actually found that computers did not do it for me. They were inanimate objects, which did nothing unless human beings pressed some buttons and made them do something. And what I quickly became interested in far more were people and the way that people were engaging with with these computers. And so I sort of morphed into training has morphed. training, I moved in training,

Steve Thomas  5:02 

you got this transition? I mean, if I think about encapsulate your experience, you were at the right at the beginning of this whole change of how people interacted with these machines.

Marc Powell  5:16 

Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe not right at the beginning. But I was, I was maybe there at the end of the beginning. But the thing I realized now that I was drawn to was, firstly, people, and the way that people engaged with the digital world. And then the way that they communicated with each other using the digital world. And as soon as email became something that was used more widely, somehow, I came across the fact that there was an issue there. And the issue was apparent, at the end of the last century, with early adopters, where people were saying they were drowning in email, they were receiving hundreds of emails every day. Even though there were still vast numbers of people who weren't using it yet. The people who were, were using it a lot.

Steve Thomas  6:26 

So it said, we have to remind young, younger listeners of this age, and describe it because it may seem impossible to believe. But there was a letter tray on your desk, where the post came in. And that was a formal part of your day, was looking at the letters, your business letters. And to certain extent, then increasingly, when you look in your looked at your corporate, but your Compuserv account or something whilst your machine had warmed up, and you would look at your inbox, but that wasn't immediately universal. There was a kind of, but not a slow, it was a fast transition over and few years wasn't there.

Marc Powell  7:15 

I think about 5 years. Yeah, maybe from about 1997 to 2002, maybe maybe more, maybe maybe eight years to 2005, something like that, when everyone had email, and you just had to have email. And everyone had it. And as soon as they had it, they had an issue with it.

Steve Thomas  7:37 

So it happened as quickly as the overwhelm happened almost immediately. Pretty much.

Marc Powell  7:46 

Yeah, pretty much. And but I think there was delayed acknowledgement, that it was a problem, because organizations were waiting for it to sort itself out. And with some organizations it did with but for the vast majority, it didn't, because of course, it was a it was about communication. And it was about the behavioral issues. It wasn't about the application. And it wasn't about digital, it was about people's inability to communicate with each other effectively. And I was taught very early on, through personal development and training courses, that fundamentally human beings actually aren't very good communicators at all. And most of the time, we're miscommunicating when we're speaking face to face. Now, if you stick wires in between us, and time, and then you give us just a keyboard and words that exacerbates the problem massively. So for 20 years now, 22 years, I've been teaching people in organizations how to use email more effectively, how to communicate more effectively, but actually, really what I've been teaching people is, is how to communicate, and how to really put yourself in the shoes of another person. And really empathize and understand where they're coming from, and what their experiences of what they're hearing, or reading or seeing you do. How is that really showing up for them? Now, what is their interpretation of that? And how do you need to place that if you like, or craft that communication? So that what they get is what you're communicating. Really back to the old wiziwig because what you what you see is what you get.

Steve Thomas  9:57 

Well, that's fascinating, isn't it? Because we touched on this on a podcast earlier, where, you know, you make the these inventions are destined to be successful, but you really don't. You can't? Well, you can't envisage exactly what the impacts going to be. And what you're saying was and reminding us of, and and it's certainly the case now, that actually, it was overwhelm. That's what brought us what it brought, rather than the effectiveness and the efficiency and the immediacy was it just highlighted human's inability to communicate effectively.

Marc Powell  10:37 

Yeah, and probably to behave selfishly rather than selflessly thinking about it, because we've seen it with email, where people find it really difficult not to copy in lots of other people, and not to reply to all in large organizations. Even though, you know, one email to 60 people might take four days out the organization in terms of time, when people start replying to all I'm replying to all the replying to all replying to all. That's not a difficult thing to calculate.

Steve Thomas  11:19 

So I mean, what is the instinct behind that?

Marc Powell  11:23 

I think it is people being quite selfish. And I'm not really thinking about the impact, that their communication is going to have not not able to really envisage what's going to happen at the other end. And you can sort of see the same naivety in a way with what's happening with now with teams, and particularly teams meetings, where people are switching on the video, as a poor cousin of face to face meetings, which we can't have right now. Or we're beginning to, again, that might be more, maybe short lived. And we think that's a replacement. And we're doing it more and more, and we're getting exhausted, and we're all but this is making me really tired. And the reason why it's making you really tired is because it isn't working. Because you do it for the wrong reason. And people aren't really aware of what is going on with in the granular detail of their communication.

Steve Thomas  12:37 

So they're thinking in a introspective way, what are they doing? They're just - it's security are better cover my posterior by making sure everybody knows about this decision, or is aware about this problem? I mean, what is this just a kind of trail of proof? Just in case things go wrong?

Marc Powell  12:59 

I mean, no, no, no, not at all. I think I think what's driving it on the one hand is an innate desire to communicate and to make things work crossed with a lack of skills and awareness on how to communicate clearly, particularly through technology. But we have poor communicators face to face. Yeah, it's it's it's a standard in probably more organizations than not, that meetings often don't work face to face meetings,

Steve Thomas  13:42 

can you quantify the impact within a large organisation?

Marc Powell  13:45 

well it wastes a huge amount of time. There's a massive amount of time lost product is a productivity drain, it creates a huge amount of stress. There's a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding. And further time is wasted dealing with the misunderstandings. There has been quite a bit of research into this. And I think that whilst there is a productivity drain, it shouldn't be forgotten that email has also made organizations more efficient because people have been able to communicate more, but there's a lot of dross the flying about the place, and I think most organizations would would agree with that. That that, that it's not used as smartly as it otherwise could be. And you can see the same types of behaviors being replicated as time goes on and on. technologies are being introduced.

Steve Thomas  15:03 

You have a statistic? I mean, how many minutes typically? Lost? I mean, you have some statistics to shock?

Marc Powell  15:12 

well, we we save people 31 minutes a day, on the time vertical using email. Yeah. Yeah. Which which pay? People go, wow. And he said, Well, how much time are you spending on email every day, most people are spending two or three hours. So a lot of that will be unnecessary.

Steve Thomas  15:33 

And as you say, there's there's a complete absence of, of training, I suppose for this, the current generation, they'd be just used to, it'll be an experience that would have been developed just in their social life or in their student life, which is just unbridled communication, and immediate communication.

Marc Powell  15:53 

I mean, I often say to people, look, if forget, you've got email, pretend you haven't got email right now. And if someone came to you and said, Look, we can give you this application, it's free. And you can give it to all your staff. And it will enable everyone to communicate with everyone send messages to everyone, or anyone from anywhere from their computer. And they can attach files as well. And it won't cost you a cent. Would you like it? Of course, you'd say yes. But then they say, Well, look, there's there's one caveat was more than one caveat, what will happen is that people will start using it a lot. And I mean, a lot like it's going out of fashion. And they'll send lots of messages, they'll actually get addicted to it, they'll be checking it in the evenings, they'll be checking out the weekends, they'll be checking it was their driving, they'll be checking it on the loo. They'll be checking it when they're reading their kids stories at night. And they'll start playing politics, and they'll do back covering, and all sorts of things. There'll be massive amounts of miscommunication as well. And it will create this sort of subculture that is completely out of control. Do you still want it? And you probably say, yes. But I think we should give people some training and introduce some protocols before we put it in.

Steve Thomas  17:26 

It's quite shocking, actually, not just in what you're saying. But in the recognition of how fundamental that whole epilogue is, to its work experience of life at the moment isn't, it has become an addictive thing.

Marc Powell  17:45 

Yeah. And

Steve Thomas  17:48 

just just training prevented, because it's the homeless need therapy,

Marc Powell  17:55 

Training does prevent, and really, it's about awareness. And some of these things, you know, people become expert in their roles, whatever they are, whatever those roles are. But there are some skills that have to be learned a little bit like what we've been, as human beings, we've come been communicating for, I think, about 2 million years. And language came in in one form or another about 50,000 years ago. I think print started maybe few 100 years ago, the telephone, which we're very adept at, came in about 100 years ago. Email came in about 25 years ago, for the majority of people maybe 20 years ago, and video we've been using for about a year. And now we're using video people, you know, basically everyone's on film. And if we track backwards from there to be on film, you need some film skills, you need some film technique. And it's not complex at all, but you need awareness around how film works, and how to work with a camera and sound and what you look like and where how far away from the camera you should be and the impact at the other end and what people are seeing. What do you look like on film? People used to be terrified of using video. And now everyone's on video. Some people still terrified.

Steve Thomas  19:36 

But I imagine it's not just yeah, you can't just get use rid of that problem. Just by experiencing it a lot. There are going to people just carrying that problem with them.

Marc Powell  19:47 

There are skills, there are straightforward skills that you need to learn. Same goes with email. There are straightforward skills and awareness that you need to learn about how to work with the medium. Just like if you went into print, and desktop publishing, there are certain techniques, there are certain ways of laying things out which fonts go with which fonts and which ones don't go with which fonts in which sides it bolds and underlines and things like that, how it all works. It's all been done, it's all been sorted out. You know, there's a lot of knowledge around that, like comedy, I learned, there's a lot of knowledge around how to create comedy. Now, if you want to create comedy, you can learn how to create comedy. If you want to create print, you can learn how to create print, if you want to do great emails, you can learn how to do that. And if you want to be great in video meetings, you can learn how to do that. But if you don't, you're just going to sort of bump along the bottom or, or get a little bit better. You know, you learn things that you learn in about five minutes of training, imagine what would happen if you went on an hour's course or an hour and a half's course,

Steve Thomas  21:00 

yeah. So can you give us a sample of the type of things that people should address? Or that you address in your course? Because I mean, we now talk about a current disruptive technology, that within your sphere, do you mean?

Marc Powell  21:16 

You mean meetings or video meetings? Or email?

Steve Thomas  21:18 

I think me I'm just talking about video meetings now. I mean, what are the kinds of things I'm just give me an example of what you can address? And what does that solve?

Marc Powell  21:32 

One, very obvious one is camera work. So there is a camera on your computer somewhere. And it's really important to be aware of where it is best to place yourself around that camera. Because that will depict what you're going to look like at the other end. And the best place to be around a camera is what's called a mid close up shot. So it's about an arm and a bit length, away from the camera. So you get Head, shoulders and a little bit more of you without your head breaking the top of the screen. And that's the best place to be. Otherwise, if you're too close, it can get quite intense. You know, we're very, very rarely that close to people face to face. And if you're further away, then you'll be quite small. Now the other thing is where you look, because people's impetus is to look at the person in their screen. But the first thing to realize is that the person is not really there, you're not really looking at them, you're looking at an image of them. And if you want to give them the experience that you are looking at them, the best place to look is in the camera is right down into the camera. Now, everyone says well, that feels very odd. Well, it is odd, because you're not looking at them. But it's pretty odd that you're speaking to someone, you know who's 30,000 miles well, but we're about 30 miles away, two miles away in your case. And as if they're there with you, they're not. So you're creating it, you don't have any sentient contact, in the sense that you can't, you can't feel them physically, you can't experience them physically, you're seeing a facsimile of them. So you sort of have to make it up. And therefore if you're looking in the camera, you're giving them the impression that you're really looking at them. And you will start creating some connection, you can still look at them on the screen, and then go back to the camera. But it's just that awareness that you're doctoring, where you're looking to give them the best experience possible, of connecting with you. And I know that one thing that that you talk about a lot is trust in technology. And there's also building trust with people and people build trust when they feel a real connection, and engagement, if you'd like and that can really help you engage. If you look at the news, if you look at any program on TV when people are presenting to camera, politicians or hosts of morning shows or game shows or whatever, they are looking straight into the camera and they can't see you, obviously, but they're imagining that you're there. And they're talking to you like they can see you and you're getting that experience that they're talking to you. They're talking to a camera and half the time they haven't even got a cameraman at the back of the camera, because it will be it will be robotic. They're making it up.

Steve Thomas  25:08 

So when it comes to the current situation and the prevalence of things like video calling teams and zoom, as we were discussing, what are the problems that are arising? And how do you solve them,

Marc Powell  25:23 

I think you have to be aware of the technology, what the what the constraints are, how it constricts, your communication, and then how you can mitigate for those constructions. I think there's also discipline that's needed in terms of learning about the technology, so you can trust the technology. So it doesn't tend to your confidence. But also, one thing that people are realizing is that video meetings are more intense than face to face meetings. Particularly if you do them well. And you're really focused. And as someone once said, 100% in the room. And what we say when we're training people is either you're connected and engaged with people or you're not, there's no 90% or 70%, you either are or you're not, really.

And if you are, it's actually less exhausting, but but you have to put in a lot of focus and a lot of energy. And therefore you need to be disciplined. And you need to limit the number of meetings that you have per day, or limit the number of video meetings that you have per day, join just by audio. Because we're actually very good at audio, we pick up a lot more, through listening to people's words and the way that they say their words than we do by looking that the postage stamp size images of them on, you know what our poor video screens, but we need to have breaks as well. And you need to plan that in and be disciplined about taking breaks and getting away from your screen. When we run training courses, we often put people in different types of breakout rooms, we say, leave your computer, go outside and have a call or have a conference call with some of your colleagues sitting under a tree in fresh air, rather than sitting at your computer and going into a virtual room together. So we're getting them away from their computer, and out into nature. And using just audio instead, why not? Much less exhausting, and much, much more invigorating. And you get a lot done, then we come back to the computer again and have a little debrief.

Steve Thomas  28:09 

What do you see ahead of us and what what will be the guiding principles from what we've learned? So far,

Marc Powell  28:16 

I think the pandemic has been really interesting, because before COVID, people always felt that virtual meetings were no match for face to face meetings. During the pandemic, they haven't had a choice. And they've got on with it. And they've realized you can do all sorts, actually virtually. And in fact, the world has continued virtually not only technically have we been able to support it. But human beings by hook or by crook have managed they've got exhausted and fatigued and some meetings maybe haven't been as good as they otherwise could be. But we've got through. So as time goes on, I think the technology will get more clever. I'm sure there are many companies at the moment, looking at putting a video camera into the middle of the screen, or maybe the top, you know two thirds of the screen so that you can actually look at the screen and it will look like you're looking at people or even a camera that follows the eye and actually darts around inside the screen, which I don't think would be impossible at all.

But eventually, maybe holograms. I don't know but ultimately it will always be about human beings. beyond that. I can't predict an AI. I don't know what would happen in terms of AI. It won't be us that's communicating. anymore, really. So it doesn't really make any difference. But I think the best we can do right now as human beings, is just keep learning and be disciplined about how can we recreate connection? virtually? How can we really get the feeling and know that the other people has have the feeling that we are really connected, so that we could talk about anything, we could have the most difficult conversation, or the most complex conversation, or the most in depth conversation or the most emotional conversation. And it'll be as powerful or maybe even more powerful than if we were face to face.

Steve Thomas  30:42 

And I suppose what we've learned from this disruption is that humans are quite a complex. They're quite complex machines in a way, or maybe they're more complex. And we didn't acknowledge that at the beginning of the journey, we thought it was the machines that were going to be complex.

Marc Powell  31:00 

Computers are ones and zeros, everything what's happening is ones and zeros. Human beings, are more complex than that we have far more Shades of Grey, and uncertainty and chaos going on, within us and between us and in groups and in organizations. And computers are just a conduit really, for that chaos. One, one thing that we've been talking to a lot of our customers about is, where is the culture of an organization now that everyone's atomized and actually, the culture is in the values of the organization, therefore, it's really important more important than ever, to talk about the values and role model values of your organization all the time. There's the hybrid working is, is here, now very much so people are talking about Well, where do you have the those moments where, where randomness can occur? Where you used to bump into someone in the corridor or you know, by the water cooler? Do we have water coolers? We do have water coolers? We don't call them that? The water machine? The coffee machine, the kitchen? The kitchenette? Yeah, yeah. And you and you have a chat with someone. And therefore it's important to have more of those short conversations with people virtually, and create that. That random randomness in a way we've got to be more creative around that role model that would enter very interesting work with a university, actually, around that creating random instances where creativity can happen. It just sort of, you know, bursts out.

Steve Thomas  33:05 

Yeah, no, I get that completely. Yeah. You're replicating the human experience? Well, you know, which is the theme throughout this conversation.

Marc Powell  33:14 

Yeah, replicating it while you're doing it. You're not replicating it, you're doing it really, it's just happening across wires, rather than face to face. But you've got to be disciplined. And you've got to be aware of the technology as a starting point. And then you can you can work through it. And then you know what happens? You know what happens with the best Virtual Training, the best virtual meetings, the best virtual interactions is the technology disappears, goes. And that's like magic. And people are amazed when that happens, that you can make that happen. And actually where we want to be is that we make that happen all the time. And we become adapt, you know, from the word off, you create that.

Steve Thomas  34:08 

So, Mark, thank you very much. That was really interesting. That's a really, really interesting, fascinating insight into the interaction of these disruptive technologies into onto human beings. After all, what's more important,

Marc Powell  34:24 

has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you, Steve. Thanks for inviting me.