Amiram Hayardeny's My China Experience

Spanglish, Mom and IM

I know, you got me.  People quote the words of Julius Caesar, Einstein, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and other great thinkers and visionaries.  And who do I come up with?  Adam Sandler from the film "Spanglish".  I am not going to apologize, however.  Listen to this.  Cristina Moreno, who's mother immigrated to the US and worked as a maid to support her daughter, applies to Princeton.  And this is what she writes to the Dean in the application form: "I've been overwhelmed by your encouragement to apply to your university and your list of scholarships available to me.  Though, as I hope this essay shows, your acceptance, while it would thrill me, will not define me.  My identity rests firmly and happily on one fact: I am my mother's daughter".  I saw this film three times, and three times I had this uncontrollable urge to call my mother.  It may sound corny, but truthfully, if there's any one sentence with which I can define myself, it's as easy as: I am my mother's son.
My mother was born in a concentration camp in Romania in 1940.  The surviving part of the family moved to Israel in 1950.  She worked all her life as a teacher and a school principal, and if there was one thing she never compromised on was her children's education.  (She didn't compromise on too many things).  I know I owe her so much, and that there's no way to pay her back.  Maybe there is one way.  Do the same for my children.  I hope she will be around to see that I did a good job.
Again, at the risk of sounding corny, I recommend, pick up the phone and call your Mom.  You probably won't regret it.

An interesting topic came up during a meeting today.  Instant Messaging.  Until not too long ago, I was one of the greatest advocates for using IM.  It is simple, it is available, it can give you access to people you need really quickly.  In fact, it can give you immediate access to anyone who happens to be on line at the time.  Using IM, you can get an answer for a business question in a matter of minutes, rather than wait a day (or more) for an email answer.  So this all seems to be good, right?  What's the discussion then?  To my own great surprise, I found myself raising the following points: Are you sure you want to be available all the time?  Are you sure that availability doesn't change the urgency of things?  (in other words, you really could wait with this issue until the next morning, but since you have John Dough on-line, why not ask him about it right now?).  Soon enough your willing to wait for an answer diminishes.  Worse, you are ready to take answers from less capable people, simply because they happen to be on-line.  You also may start to develop a tendency to communicate face-to-face only with those who are on-line more frequently.  Soon enough, people start to "hide" on-line.  They make themselves visible only to "friends".  In case you're interested, I have seen it happening.  At my old job, which shall remain nameless, people stopped respecting privacy, family, Holidays, vacations and nights.  Before IM, as a manager, you would have a dilemma: should I or should I not call an employee in the middle of the night?  Or in other words: what constitutes an emergency?

What I am saying is that IM is a great tool for professional and social reasons alike.  What we have to do is educate.  My management team and I are looking at it, and we are trying to come up with an etiquette for using IM in a way which will not deprive people of their privacy and life.  A protocol which will let us enjoy the benefits of IM, without being enslaved by it.  I am going to look up resources for IM etiquette.  Once we reach a conclusion, I will share.

Posted at 01:07PM Nov 20, 2006 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]