Basic Observations - Aerospace Engineering Design - Lecture Slides, Slides of Engineering Dynamics

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Agenda

• Introduction

• Basic Observations

• Rules for Electronic Communications

• Legalities

• Summary

• Questions

Introduction

• Purpose:
  • Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET): “Engineering programs must demonstrate that their students attain…an ability to communicate effectively”.
  • My experience: Often the root cause of major incidents and minor conflicts is a lack of effective communication.
  • The appropriate use of electronic communications is a workplace issue, especially for junior engineers.
  • Email facilitates and clarifies communications, but it also creates a lot of unproductive effort, such as: - managing unnecessary correspondence - addressing behavioral and procedural infractions
  • There are common patterns of email usage that lead to workplace difficulties as well as patterns that convey the sender’s intent efficiently and without drama

Some Rules for Peaceful and Productive E-Communication

• Be responsive. Send a reply quickly…unless you are angry. In that case, write a response but wait overnight before sending it.
• No BCC's. Communicate in the open. Don’t get a reputation for sending BCC’s.
• No reply to all. Try to reply to only one. Email trouble is proportional to the square of the recipients.
• Asking two or more people to do something triggers the Freeloader Principle.
• If there’s a list of recipients, beware of protocol. Put them in rank order or list them alphabetically. Never list people in the order you recall their names – this can unintentionally convey their importance.
• Nuclear option: Guarantee that an email will be noticed and read by using the recall function on it.
• Use the subject line to convey a meaningful, thoughtful, summary of the message. Alternatively, use it as a one line text message.
• Useless message options: Urgent, Receipt, Sensitive, Follow up
• Useful message option: ‘Do Not Send Before’
• Be considerate: Giant files can clog a mailbox. Avoid stationary, wallpaper and (generally) shrink photo sizes before sending. Use standard fonts, black is best color, 10 pt font size.

Some Rules for Peaceful and Productive E-Communication

• Salutations should be used, provided they don't begin with ‘Hey...’. Follow the convention of your workplace. Something to denote end of message is considerate. Unless you have a cryptic email address, the recipient already knows it's from you. Omit the inspirational quotes, graphics, emoticons, animations, and impressively long titles.
• Use the Out of Office Assistant. Don’t forget to turn it off when you return.
• Avoid flame wars. Definitely don’t cc your boss on one! Both parties look bad. I don’t read them.
• Spend time to get culturally aware and incorporate that in your communications. - Know when to use names, when to use a salutation, and when to add others to the distribution - In some cases it is appropriate to begin with a personal message, professional, but non-business related. After that, you get to the point. - Know how to handle complaints. Sometimes it is best to show empathy first, then propose solutions. - Know when to use sarcasm or jokes. - Know when to apologize in an email, often it is best to use the phone or face-face communication.

Legalities

• Caution: These are thoughts from a non-attorney.
• In 1997, Chevron paid over 2 million dollars to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit regarding the use of company email to send offensive emails. One was entitled ’25 reasons why beer is better than women’.
• The Governor of New Jersey recently ceased using email in response to a lawsuit requesting that his messages be made public.
• Assume no privacy. Employers can read emails created, stored, or processed on their computers without your consent. Only 2 states require disclosure to employees. Personal email routed through foreign computing resources can be legally monitored by their governments without consent.
• Companies may be required to deliver all electronic correspondence as part of the pre-trial ‘discovery’ phase of a legal proceeding.
• Data mining electronic correspondence is a growth industry.
• Don’t claim that something is illegal, even in jest. Context is arguable in court.

Legalities

• Don’t email anything that exposes you or your company to liability. This includes personal attacks, adult content, and violations of intellectual property, export controlled data or copyright agreements.
• Disclaimers: Follow your company’s procedure and practice.
• “Production” – Phase in lawsuit whereby a company is required to retrieve, sort, and deliver documents relevant to a case. The overwhelming majority of these documents are electronic: emails, and increasingly text messages.
• IM and text messaging are legally treated the same as email.

Summary

• Effective communication is essential to your career success.
• Know what tool to use: Email and texting are appropriate but they are inappropriate for every communication task.
• With electronic communications it is especially important to know what to say and what to omit. Carefully select recipients.
• Assume that there is no privacy and no deletion of e-messages.