John Cox

Turn off the cell phone

For an introduction to this article, please read the basis of my 7 Habits for Highly Productive People. I will probably have to change the title of this once I hear from Covey's lawyers, but in the meantime it works for me.

Right behind the Shoe Fitting X-Ray Machine comes the cell phone as the twentieth century worst inventions. It is not that the cell phone isn't convenient in business, but rather that it is too convenient to others. The distractions that it causes far out way the uses to make it a productive tool to remain on all the time. The nice thing about the cell phone is there is generally voice mail which is the basis of my tip number 3.

A bit of a disclaimer before I get too far into this article. I understand that there are times when the phone must stay on. If you are on call, work in a call center, or the myriad of other variations then there are legitimate reasons to having the phone on. I, for instance, work from my home. When I am not in my office off my bedroom, I am traveling. I do have my cell phone on 24 / 7 when I am on the road in case there is a family emergency. However, I leave the ringer always on vibrate, and I don't answer the phone, as you shall see, during business hours until it is convenient to me.

Since the majority of my time is spent in the field working with customers, my tips revolve around my lifeline (my cell phone). However, you could easily extend this to your phone if you are in a corporate environment with the disclaimer understood as above. Most phone systems have the ability to set as "busy", and thus roll directly to voice mail. In some cases this may not be practical, but you never know until you try.

Communication is dead, long live communication

As I have grown older, I have grown a bit wiser to the games that people play. I have found that generally the biggest gamers are those within your own organization. We play the blame game quite a bit in corporate politics. One of the favorite games that my folks in my organization plays is "Let's put John on the spot with a question he couldn't possibly know without a little research but expect an answer immediately". It is a fun game for some, but I decided about six months ago to stop participating. I allow the majority of my phone calls to roll into my voice mail. If you don't leave me a voice mail, then that is one less phone call I have to return.

What I have found by doing this is, I have lost absolutely nothing and actually gained the one thing that I have been after: time. My customers still get better service from me than they do other companies because I have time to give thoughtful responses to their inquiries. My boss gets more thought out responses and is less likely to micro-manage my decisions. I have been give more freedom by simply doing the unthinkable, which is not answering my phone.

You have to remember that the cell phone has only been a business requirement over the past ten years or so, and that time frame may be pushing it. I remember when I first left the Navy and came to work at my current organization I had to pull over at a rest area every few hours to check my voice mail from a pay phone. While this was a bit of an obnoxious side effect of voice mail, I at least had the ability to plan when I would be on the phone and when I would not be on the phone.

It's all about the relationships

Often times when on business calls, I find that the actual reason for a call is about 30% - 40% of the time spent. The remainder of the call is spent on the pleasantries. "How are the kids?". "Did you see the (insert favorite team name here) game?". Why do we do this? We are simply trying to humanize ourselves with our customers, or within our organization. We want them to understand that we play with our kids and that we have something in common with them. Our lives do not revolve around our work (right?), instead the revolve around our leisure. We want everyone to understand this, just as the caller on the other end wants to do.

Every time we talk to someone on the phone, we are building or destroying our relationship with that person. We are moving past the sales / buyer agent roles and becoming human. When speaking internally, we are moving past the employee / human resource roles. Regardless of the combination the ratio in my life tends to remain the same. When I try to cut to the chase, often times I am moving my relationship with that person backwards. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but when we spend our entire day on the phone we are probably only producing a 40% time ratio to energy spent. Our work for the day still remains a constant, as do our priorities.

The interesting thing about this is, most folks are much more concise with their voice mails than they are with the phone calls. "This is John, could you send me a proposal for this. Just email it to me, and no rush on it, I just need it for a presentation on Friday". This snippet might have taken 20 seconds for me to listen to, but I know what I need to do, when I need to add it to my priorities, and how to respond. If I had answered my phone, I would bet that 20 seconds would have turned into five minutes without a clear expectation of how to respond or what was needed.

Relationships are fun to build with the pleasantries, but nothing goes further in any relationship than actually meeting or exceeding expectations. "John's a nice guy, but I wish he would actually do what I need". Guess what, somewhere in that five minute conversation we had, you never communicated your needs, thus I missed it. Being nice and likable only goes so far in the business world.

Be clear in your expectations

In my opinion, we have become way to comfortable with instance gratification. In that comfort zone we have traded our desire for a quality answer for an immediate one. I am willing to concede the fact that we do get quality answers immediately at time, if not the majority of times. However, I would give anything to have accuracy 100% of the time rather than 80 or 90% of the time. When I give a higher degree of accuracy, that should equate to me not having to do work over. That alone increases my productivity.

Likewise, when you leave clear expectations of what is needed, you often times get what you wanted. How often have you had a conversation when you felt you communicated your exact needs and ended up getting something completely different? Somewhere along the way the communication partners were not in sync. Voice mail allows us to listen several times rather than the message being clouded in personal conversation.

I am much more apt to leave a voice mail now than when I was a slave to my cell phone. Others expected an immediate response from me, turn around is fair game. Others wanted to play "stump the chump" with me, let me do the same back. I had traded quality for immediate gratification with this line of thinking. Now, I get the information that I need to my customers and my bosses in the form that they need, and both appreciate me much more than they did in the past. The side bonus is, I am expending the right amount of time in my serial equation.

Sum it up

People will leave you a voice mail when they can not reach you. If they won't leave a voice mail, then chances are what they needed was not urgent. If you have the information they need, they will communicate their needs to you.

People are more concise on voice mail and communication is not cluttered with personal relationship items. You will generally have the "What, when, how, and who's" communicated better in a 20 second message than a 5 minute conversation.

Don't sacrifice quality for immediate gratification. If you make decisions based on a instance and immediate answer, then you decisions will be based on flawed information. Demand quality by communicating exactly what you need.

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