Maybe “disperse”
is a better word than “disappear,” but futurist Mike Walsh thinks mobile
communication already is disappearing. “When you look at new technologies like
Google Glass, like Fitbit, things that are tracking our motion and steps, you
are actually seeing the idea of mobile fragmenting, breaking up, and
disappearing into our clothing, our eye wear, into our everyday lives,” he said.
Source: Ecourterre, Fittersift |
Everything?
That includes how we communicate and how we behave. Communication is not about
putting words, images or sound on any number of screens. Communication at work
helps people understand and succeed. What if you receive an infographic with
this hour’s purchase uptick after your new product introduction, exactly at the
time you are delivering a presentation to your sales executive, sent to your
aural or visual field simply because you are in a conversation on that
topic?
For one
thing, you wouldn’t be heads-down in a digital screen to retrieve your most
current numbers. And for another, you’d be out talking with people, having a conversation—the
richest communication. How we communicate and how we behave will be different
when smartphones, tablets, watches and glasses are truly contextual—aware of
where you are and what you are doing—not a conveyance method driven by someone else’s
delivery routine.
That’s been
a problem employee communicators have faced from Day One. We can deliver
messages, but their relevance depends on the receiver, not the sender trying to
capture attention and drive engagement.
Employee
communicators are trying out company-to-employee apps on smartphones, practicing
limited context even as very early adopters are practicing integrated context in
wearable computers like clothing or tattoos. Since more than half of adult
Americans said in the recent Pew Research Internet Project it would be “very
hard to give up” their cellphones, we as communicators have a path to bridge real
life with smartphones into future, on-the-job, context technology.
Also from
the Pew study, both the Internet and cell phones were more important to respondents
than television, email, and even social media. In real life, people experience how
cell phones connect them to others, and maybe intuitively they understand it’s
the Internet that helps them find, create and share information, not to mention
organize work, learn skills and do our jobs better.
So when you think of mobile communication, think of context, not merely delivery. Appreciating context, not just delivering information, is a good practice for any workplace communication.
So when you think of mobile communication, think of context, not merely delivery. Appreciating context, not just delivering information, is a good practice for any workplace communication.