A quick overview of how your company should manage digital communications. Which tools should you use? How do you create a communications policy? What is efficient communication? Presentation created by www.hiri.com An email client that helps you master the art of email. A complete replacement for Microsoft Outlook.

2. Companies like Google and Facebook spend millions
improving their culture. Often this manifests itself as an
improved physical environment. But most
communication these days is digital. But companies
rarely spend time or money creating a digital
communications strategy.

3. Complexity
Turbulence
Information
overload
:-(

4. is a competitive
Communication
advantage

5. Is it important?
More than 80 percent of employees polled in the US and UK said that
employee communication influences their desire to stay with or leave
an organisation.
Burton, 2006

6. Is it important?
The 200 “most admired” companies spent more than three times as much
on employee communications as the 200 “least admired” companies
Seitel, 2004

7. New tools

8. Social Chat Video Email Other

9. How do we choose?

10. • Millennials/Gen Y
• Different locations
• Cultures
• Life stage
Considerations

11. Plan for considerate communication
Train your staff

12. Channel
Source encoding decoding Receiver
feedback
Good communication looks like this

13. Channel
Source encoding decoding Receiver
feedback
Is the information:
• Clear?
• Useful?
• Accurate?

14. Channel
Source encoding decoding Receiver
feedback
• Your ability to communicate
• How well you know your audience
• Your ability to anticipate confusion

15. Channel
Source encoding decoding Receiver
feedback
• High/low ambiguity?
• Priority?
• Time sensitive?
• Emotional content?
• Distribution (team? company?)
• Familiarity
We’ll come
back to this

16. Channel
Source encoding decoding Receiver
feedback
• Read messages carefully
• Actively listen
• Interpret content back to thought
• Decoding errors leads to misinterpretation

17. Channel
Source encoding decoding Receiver
feedback
• Have preconceived ideas
• Be mindful of current environment
• Consider the reaction you want

18. Channels
Focus on the

19. Rich/lean communications model
Choose the right channel for your communication

20. Rich
Lean
Meetings
Video calls
Phone
Chat
Social
Email
SMS
• Emotional content
• Complex decisions
• Unambiguous tasks
• Record required

21. Rich
Lean
• Emotional content
• Complex decisions
• Unambiguous tasks
• Record required

22. Synchronous
Asynchronous
Ambiguous Unambiguous
Email
Chat SMS
Social
Meeting
Video

23. Channels
Comparing

24. Chat/IM
Good Bad
Need an answer fast Can be a constant distraction
Little formality required Less time to think about response
Resolving ambiguity Tone can be misinterpreted
Horizontal/team communication Fear of chats being used as a weapon

25. Video conferencing
Good Bad
Non verbal communication Difficult to use with multiple people
Realtime Frustrating if connection is poor
Resolving complexity / ambiguity Usually requires privacy
Horizontal communication

26. Social
Good Bad
Top down/bottom up comm. Can be very noisy
Inter-department collaboration Unclear use case
Knowledge base Relies on self organisation - adoption

27. Email
Good Bad
Top/bottom/horizontal/Inter-company Over used
Asynchronous communication Noisy
Time for a considered response Bad for emotional content
Channel of record Unclear use case

28. Criteria Bad
Enterprise focus?
Works with Exchange O365?
Windows/Mac/Linux?
Cost N/A $5 - $8 N/A Free $2 - $5
Conversation view
Labels
Separation of Actionable emails

29. Email
Focus on

30. 2001
25 Emails
Radicatti /University of Texas

31. 125+ Emails
Radicatti /University of Texas
2015

32. Your work day
All email
Hiri reduces
time spent on
email by 30 mins
Other work

33. 96
checks
times
a day
University of Loughborough

34. of actionable emails contain
no discernible action
47%
University of Loughborough

35. CC: dave@hiri.com; kevin@hiri.com; laura@hiri.com;
pop@hiri.com; luka@hiri.com; mano@hiri.com;
paul@hiri.com; angela@hiri.com; john@hiri.com;
jane@hiri.com; mary@hiri.com; anesh@hiri.com;
peter@hiri.com; juliet@hiri.com; william@hiri.com;
john.appleseed@hiri.com; joseph@hiri.com;
kate@hiri.com; elaine@hiri.com; cormac@hiri.com;
lousie@hiri.com; jason@hiri.com; amit@hiri.com;
emer@hiri.com; nenad@hiri.com; jimmy@hiri.com;
ivan@hiri.com; charlotte@hiri.com;
paolina@hiri.com; bob@hiri.com; louise@hiri.com;

36. “Is he saying what I think
he’s saying?”

37. Hi David,
Please could you tell me Kevin’s date of birth- he gave it to you a few weeks
ago when we were filling out the information on ROS.
Your sincerely,
Rose

38. "Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell
me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—I really
believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my
'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the
news."
It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the
Empress Marya Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high rank and
importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was,
as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.
All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning,
ran as follows:
"If you have nothing better to do, Count (or Prince), and if the prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid
is not too terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10—Annette Scherer."
"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the least disconcerted by this reception. He had just
entered, wearing an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on his breast and a
serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but
thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of importance who had grown old in society
and at court. He went up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented, and shining head,
and complacently seated himself on the sofa.
"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's mind at rest," said he without altering his tone,
beneath the politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony could be discerned.
"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna
Pavlovna. "You are staying the whole evening, I hope?"
"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I must put in an appearance there," said the
prince. "My daughter is coming for me to take me there."
"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."
"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have been put off," said the prince, who, like a
wound-up clock, by force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.
"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's dispatch? You know everything."
"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold, listless tone. "What has been decided? They have
decided that Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to burn ours."
Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary,
despite her forty years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had become her social
vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the
expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile which, though it did not suit her faded features, always
played round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming defect, which she
neither wished, nor could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.
In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna burst out:
"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand things, but Austria never has wished, and does not
wish, for war. She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign recognizes his high
vocation and will be true to it. That is the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to
perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his

39. No specific actions
Missing subject line
Should have phoned
Forgot about your email
Too easy to create a thoughtless email
Open ended questions
Poorly formatted emails
Bad To-do list

40. Ferrari’s New Strategy: Make
Fewer Cars, Send Fewer Emails
- Wall Street Journal

41. Intel Flirts With No Email Fridays
- Information Week

42. Fix these problems and get
30 minutes
of your day back

44. Recommendations
You set the example
Develop a common understanding of how to use tools
Experiment with different tools
There’s no one tool going to save the day
Stopgap measures like no email days don’t work
Build an online communications culture