My good friend Jon Davis picked up an article by Rosabeth Moss Cantor on The Harvard Business Review that is so good that I wanted to write about it here.

“Managers of the last century, gave speeches, then had their assistants send snail mail letters with the text, and maybe followed up by a phone call to see if it was received.

Managers of the 21st century send an email and think they’ve taken care of everything. Message received. Action underway. Done deal. – NOT“

Rosabeth gets it 100% right, 21st Century email fire and forget strategies just don’t work. She carries on:

“In my experience, people don’t “get” the important messages leaders try to send the first time around. This isn’t intentional, but there’s too much noise and too many distractions. And leaders with a lot of ideas find that people wait to see which ones take priority, which ones will be acted on, and which ones the leader really cares about.”

Here’s why communications can’t be a one off affair if we really want the message to be acted upon:

• Staff don’t read all of their emails
• Many emails are skimmed or filtered by subject and discarded
• Emails get read on a PDA (Blackberry) often when on a conference call or in a meeting with a low level of attention to the message
• 21st Century Leaders send out too many messages and staff become confused and wonder if the boss actually means it

Here is what Rosabeth has to say on the matter:

“I also find that people don’t automatically read all of their emails or download attachments. They read the subject line to see if they should. If the subject line is blank, there’s a risk that the message will be missed. (I now try to stuff the gist of the message in the subject line.)

Furthermore, even if people hear something once, they don’t necessarily remember that they did. Busy people with multiple projects might forget that something has already been discussed and raise it again at a meeting. Leaders cannot assume that just because it has been said, it has been heard.”

Electronic communications make physical delivery faster but cannot (of their own) overcome the human limitations that we all are constrained by. Ask yourself this, if a manager received 250 important letters every day (even when he was on holiday) many of which required action or change of behavior how well would he cope?

“So use the principle of redundancy. If the message is very important, send it through multiple media, in various forms, and do it a few times. It seems annoying, I know, but the delete key is so easy to use. I never mind a polite follow up (after a little time has passed), especially if it is easy to respond.

As for speeches, make those headlines dramatic, repeat them several times, and keep the theme going in the next few speeches.

I don’t think redundancy is waste; I think it provides focus. If you want everyone to be on the same page, put the page in front of them conveniently and often.”

As my very wise carpenter father would have said:

“If it is not working you aren’t using a big enough hammer”