At least that is the point made by Nir Zuk, Founder of Palo Alto Networks, who is featured in the terrific “30 Second MBA” series at FastCompany.com.
We know “always” is not always feasible, but Nir’s point is a good one. If feasible, communicate face-to-face. Don’t call people in the office, walk to their desks. Talk to them, see their body language and especially today, get their undivided attention.
During my years in corporate life I made it a rule to always be in the room with the decision maker when a major decision needed to be made. Even if that meant having to travel to another work location or to a customer’s site. In most cases, the results were worth the effort.
We do live in a different world today, with many more ways to communicate than traveling to meet with someone face-to-face. But as we have written on this blog as to why face-to-face business meetings are more effective than video-conferencing, this is not only true for meetings with customers, but also for internal meetings. In today’s cost-cutting world, it will not be easy to justify a trip, but your automatic reaction to every internal meeting request should not be “Let’s do a video conference.”
Neither should your automatic response to every travel request within SoCal be “Let’s take the car”. There are alternatives, such as public transportation. Or nowadays, taking an air-taxi flight with New Vectors Aviation, FlyMiwok’s approved operator in the SoCal area, if you need to go anywhere between Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, L.A. and San Diego.
Veit Irtenkauf – Chief Product Officer – FlyMiwok, Inc.
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