The Online CMO by Philip Hallenborg

When I was 15, I used to work extra during the summer at UPS Stockholm (when it was called Seabourne). My father was the managing director for the company so I wasn’t exactly employed for my skill but more as a typical “gotta find my son a summer job” employee.

One of the things I used to do was to send telex to other offices around the world. Yes, you heard me. Not fascimile/fax but telex (see the beautiful beast below). I realize that I must sound like a relic from the past. But we actually used to send confirmations on transports and messages on financial daily performance via telex. This was in 1988 and I recall this even at the time being inferior to fax and a tool that was looked upon with some scepticism.

Today, I find myself in a purely globalized company using an array of communication tools. To name a few I use fax, email, internet messanger (only internal), MS net meeting, MS live meeting, smart phone, Avaya IP Phone software (mobile office), telephone and video conferencing. In the online space we are especially open to new tools given the magnitude of our business outsourced to India and other offshore locations.

Because I tend to IM with colleagues only 5 metres away, the only way to notice that your colleague is on the other side of the world is that you don’t know which part of his name is first and surname respectively or that you ping him in the evening and he says “good morning”.

At least it would appear so. 

I am becoming painfully aware of the downsides of the globalized company. In theory, all the communication methods offer a steady flow of information. But the problem is that information, when offered by face to face substitutes, doesn’t help you understand culture, attitude or informal agendas.

An abundance of factual information derived from the rich palett of communication methods may give you a false sense of being “in the loop” when actual decisions are made by the Coffee Machine in influential corporate locations.

So if you want to be effective in a globalized world, move your desk to the coffee machine and depend less on your email. Direct interaction face to face still rules unless you work in Finland. There you need to remove your clothes and move your desk into the sauna…