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CUNY CISC 1001 - Study Notes

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E-Mail Saves Time, but Being There Says MoreNew York Times January 26, 2010On the RoadE-Mail Saves Time, but Being There Says More By JOE SHARKEYEMOTICONS are “intended to represent a facial expression and to convey the sort of emotion that plain text does not,” it says in the Webster’s online entry about those typographical symbols that turn up in e-mail messages.Emoticons may work in personal communications. But Don G. Lents, the chairman of Bryan Cave, the international law firm, said he doesn’t like seeing them in business communications. If you’re depending on a smiley face to communicate a thought to a client or a distant colleague, he tells young lawyers in his firm, you should probably step away from the keyboard, get on a plane and communicate in person. Especially if the communication involves any kind of dispute.“You should never engage in a disagreement electronically,” Mr. Lents said he advises them. “If you are going to disagree with somebody, you certainly don’t want to do it by e-mail, and if possible you don’t even want to do it by phone. You want to do it face to face.”That kind of advice can cost a company money, at a time when most are carefully weighing the expenses versus the benefits of business trips. But it also reflects a subtle cultural divide between those whose careers have been spent on the road, and those — typically younger employees — who are more comfortable with electronic communications, whether e-mail or, increasingly, videoconferencing.Mr. Lents, a 60-year-old lawyer who cut his teeth in the fast-paced mergers and acquisitions field, said he is a firm believer in communications technology. Using it judiciously can eliminate some business travel, he said, and it can also make you more productive during long hours in airports.“There is no question that traveling these days is tougher than it used to be,” he said. “It’sless predictable, in part because of the impact of the security measures, and also because the airlines have cut back their schedules and you’re more susceptible to weather or mechanical delays. Over all, you just have fewer choices.” This from someone who flies so much on his primary airline, American Airlines, that he is a member of its Concierge Key program — the super-elite, invitation-only status that generated much talk recently over the George Clooney role as a hard-charging business traveler in the movie “Up in the Air.”That distinction gives you some extra personal services, but it doesn’t quite eliminate the rigors of traveling 200,000 or so miles a year. “I have to plan on more time than I used to for travel,” Mr. Lents said. “I have to be prepared to be flexible. And I travel with more communications stuff than I used to, because of the growing downtime in airline lounges waiting for flights.” Over all, business travel dropped sharply last year, primarily because of the weak economy. At the same time, the expanding videoconferencing industry says that remote communications are increasingly replacing business trips. No one doubts that, though the data is mostly anecdotal. Corporate travel business appeared to stabilize in the fourth quarter of 2009, American Express said in a recently. And there have been some other recent indications that business travel is on the road to a modest recovery. But not everyone agrees that recoveryis at hand. “I’m not expecting a rebound in business travel in 2010,” Gary Kelly, the chiefexecutive of Southwest Airlines, said.Meanwhile, old hands on the road like Mr. Lents said they were encouraging younger employees, in particular, to “think systematically,” as he put it, about how to balance stay-at-home communications with the need to sometimes do business in person. Bryan Cave has more than 1,000 lawyers and legal professionals among its 2,200 employees in the United States, Asia and Europe.“That’s an important message that does not necessarily come naturally to a lot of youngerpeople today who have grown up with so much of their communications being by texting and e-mail,” he said. “I tell our younger lawyers, if you think you are going to have a difficult interaction with a colleague or a client, if you can do it face to face that’s better, because you can read the body language and other social signals.” “In texting and e-mails or even videoconferencing, you can’t always gauge the reaction and sometimes things can have a tendency to be misunderstood, or they can ratchet up to a level of seriousness that you didn’t anticipate,” he added. “In person, you see that somebody reacting in a way that you didn’t expect. Then you can stop and figure out what’s going on, and adapt.” E-mail:


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