Downsides of Email

You must have heard of Daniel Goleman? He is the renowned author of “Emotional Intelligence” which was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half; with more than 5,000,000 copies in print worldwide in 30 languages.

Read what he has to say about email in the New York Times.

Email undoubtedly has many advantages -” it’s quick and convenient, democratizes access and lets us stay in touch with loads of people we could never see or call. It enables us to accomplish huge amounts of work together”

However, it can never capture the emotions of the sender as well as a personal interaction can.

“One reason for this is that we tend to misinterpret positive e-mail messages as more neutral, and neutral ones as more negative, than the sender intended. Even jokes are rated as less funny by recipients than by senders”

As Professor Clay Shirky an adjunct professor in New York University’s interactive telecommunications program puts it “Social software” like e-mail “is not better than face-to-face contact; it’s only better than nothing.”

Think about this before you dash off an email to the guy in the next cubicle or to the girl down the corridor.

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Travel and Navigate New and Exciting Roads

Talk of innovation in employee retention practices. Here’s a splendid one from Freudenberg. called the TANNER, the Travel and Navigate New and Exciting Roads (TANNER) programme.

Since 1999, says Sarah O’Hare, the company’s vice president of HR, the programme allows children or grandchildren—between the ages of 14 and 20—of Freudenberg employees to stay with another employee’s family in a foreign country where Freudenberg has facilities.

The participating young people can stay for up to four weeks, and the company bears the entire cost of the trip as well as provides spending money and insurance coverage. Accommodation and board for the participants are provided by the host families, she says, adding that the only other requirement is that the participants maintain a travel experience diary.

The TANNER programme averages 70 participants per year, and since 1999 about 600 teenagers and young adults have taken advantage of the opportunity.

A brilliant idea worth emulating.

Sensex Rockets Past 18,000

The Sensex is a barometer of feelings about the economy. It is the name the man in the street knows for the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index.

Yesterday history was created in India with the Sensex closing at a high of 18,280 – up 789 points. For perspective, the Sensex was at 3390 on January 1, 2003, rose to 5000 in November 2003, reached 10,000 in February 2006, 15,000 in July 2007 and now up to 18,000.

The news that drove such an increase yesterday is attributed by many to indications of political stability with a patch up between the UPA and the Left- even if temporary. The market seems to have shrugged off the political worries with the Left and Congress deciding to take up the Indo-US nuclear deal issue after the festive celebration of Dussehra on Oct 22.

Fortunes, I am sure, were made or lost in the last few days. Invest carefully is my advice.

“October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February”- Mark Twain.