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John Montgomery used to be CEO and owner of Environmental Interiors, Inc. It is a fabulous company that manufactures/installs artistic metal finishes in l"monumental" buildings like airports, museums, and stadiums.
As CEO, John Montgomery would always repeat: “Face to Face First; Telephone Second; Voice Mail Third; and Email Only To Confirm Meetings or to Write ‘I have been trying to get in touch with you….’”
It turns out there is evidence behind John Montgomery's communication philosophy.
Montgomery Method:
Email: use “Only To Confirm Meetings and to say 'I've been trying to get in touch with you....”
Notice John's disdain for e-mail as a communications tool. How can this be? Email is almost too easy, too pervasive, and too inexpensive for you NOT to use it as a key communications tool.
One problem with e-mail is that it is pure text based, thus removing social cues such as voice tone or facial expression. When nuance is drained from communication, there can be unintended consequences. An example might be an interpretation that the sender is angry when that was not the case.
A second problem with e-mail is that it is too easy to be spontaneous.
Spontaneity of communications can create unintended institutional risk. For example in 2015, a group hacked Sony Corporation’s email system. The group made public the emails of movie producer Scott Rudin. In one e-mail, he described a fellow-producer a “bi-polar lunatic.” He also described a well known actress with a contract at SONY as a “minimally talented spoiled brat.”
If you do not believe us that spotaneous responses on e-mail carry instituitonal risks, ask former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In another example, BLOOMBERG BUSINESS reported that Deutsche Bank sold $1.1 billion in collateralized debt obligations to DB's clients in 1987. It later became public that Deutsche Bank’s co-head Michael Lamont wrote this in e-mail: “I think we will sell this (to our clients) just before market falls off a cliff.”
What is the Evidence?
C.E. Naquin and his colleagues examined the impact of electronic communications on individual cooperation in groups. (2008). The research team took 120 undergraduate business students and randomly assigned them to groups consisting of four members each. Thus there were 14 groups who would be interacting primarily via e-mail and 16 groups interacting in a face-to-face manner. Each group was given tasks that put individuals in a situation of deciding whether to cooperate with fellow team members for potentially greater financial gain versus a path that would only benefit them individually.
A group was considered to be cooperative if at least three of the four members sacrificed individual opportunity for gain for the benefit of the group as a whole. It was considered uncooperative if fewer than three group members made an individual benefit sacifice.
Groups that communicated primary online were less cooperative at the .001 level of significance using Chi Square statistical technique. That is a very significant level for a social science experiment.
A replication of the study was done with 64 executive level business students attending MBA programs in the evening. The average age was 40.8 years. Once again, participants were assigned to groups of four members. Eight groups communicated via e-mail and eight groups interacted face-to-face. They were given a different situation that involved a maximization of personal gain versus contributing to the benefit of the group. Once again, online communications resulted in less cooperation. The results were at the .01 level of significance.
Cooperation vs. Communication:
If the issue is pure communication, e-mail may be the most efficient technique. For example, you read on linkedin.com that Jane Smith has a new job as partner at a law firm. If your objective is only to communicate that you read the notice and wish to congratulate her, then sending an email or texting her through LinkedIn is sufficient.
But if you would like to gain Jane’s cooperation to introduce you to her fellow-partners or to her clients, then a LinkedIn or e-mail response is the last thing you want to do. This is the important point in the Montgomery Technique.
You want to call her to invite her for a congratulatory lunch. If that is not practical, you may wish to call her and speak with her on the phone.
Touching Potential Job Candidates:
One of our services is retained search and we subscribe to a LinkedIn service designed for recruiters. This service allows us to easily be in email touch with millions of people. We can search the database and find people to communicate with by title, industry, geography, and size of company. It is a great tool for communicating with people.
LinkedIn is not very effective tool in terms of getting people to cooperate with us. After all, we want them to send us their resumes or introduce us to their colleagues. We do not wish to communicate for the sake of communication.
To move from communication to cooperation, we have to use the LinkedIn technology only as a first step on the way to a phone call to establish a relationship to be followed by a face-to-face meeting.
CEO-Board Communications.
The distinction between communication and cooperation can be confusing for busy senior executives. Given the demands on personal time, we find that many of our CEO clients like to send out emails with attachments to Board members to keep them in the communications loop.
If the only objective is one-way communications, then e-mail is the technique of choice.
But do CEOs communicate with Board members for the sake of communications only?
Our CEOs tend to use communications for the purposes of influencing Board members. Using the Montgomery Method, one would argue that e-mail is that last technique they should employ.
Telephone vs. Facebook.
As a communication platform, Facebook is an excellent tool. But it is not a great tool to elicit cooperation. You might wish to spend more time on the phone and less time on your mobile device.
Psychology Today readers with long driving commutes to and from work can take advantage of this by using automobile time to engage in hands-free phone conversations. There are several excellent headsets on the market that allow the person on the other end to be unaware that you are driving.
The Montgomery Method as a Leadership Tool:
We know we have just given you unwelcomed news: effective communications is going to be more time consuming than you thought they might be. To get done what you really want to accomplish, you have to resort to some time-consuming, “old fashioned” techniques like face-to-face interaction and the phone.
Is it really more time consuming or are we using the wrong template to measure time?
George Bernard Shaw once said, “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Assume that Shaw is correct. Can you even begin to calculate the amount of time you spend trying to clear up communications that get botched? How much time, for example, will Deutsche Bank spend in trying to repair its reputation with clients? If you add that amount of spent time to the equation, perhaps the old fashioned techniques might not be such time wasters after all.
Using John Montgomery’s approach gives you a decision template for selecting your communications tools.
References:
Bloomberg Business. “Deutsche Bank Sold Mortgage-Linked ‘Pigs” as market Buckled, Lawmakers Say.” August 31, 2011. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-14/deutsche-bank-sold-mortgage-linked-pigs-as-market-buckled-lawmakers-say.html
Naquin, C. E., Kurtzberg, T. R., & Belkin, L. Y. (2008). E-mail communication and group cooperation in mixed motive contexts. Social Justice Research, 21(4), 470-489.
VARIETY. “ Leaked Sony Emails Reveal Jokes About Obama and Race.” December 10, 2014 http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/leaked-sony-emails-reveal-jokes-about-obama-and-race-1201376676/
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