Whilst I love my husband dearly, he is a complete luddite.
At work we have a programme Microsoft Office Communicator available to us. For those of you who haven’t encountered it, it’s an office chat client that interfaces with Outlook.
It allows one to chat to colleagues in the same way one would with MSN Messenger. The interface with Outlook uses an individual’s calendar entry and displays it as a status. So if I’m in a meeting, others can see I’m in a meeting and choose to disturb me or otherwise.
I believe Communicator makes me more effective because I can be in an audio, preparing a presentation or sending an e-mail and communicating, answering or asking questions via Communicator.
I persuaded myself that our department needed the software and they now have it, and many use it.
I persuaded another department they needed the software and they now have it, and use it.
The only remaining person at work that I think should install the software is my husband.
Dave works in a completely unrelated department. His calendar is very, very busy. If I want to get in touch about something I do have choices.
I can e-mail him but often he doesn’t get a chance to see my e-mail in the vast amount of e-mails he gets in a day.
I can call him but I risk interrupting a meeting or the call gets picked up by a secretary. If all I want to know is whether Dave had remembered to call someone about something domestic then I don’t necessarily want to have to talk to a secretary about it.
I can text him, but texts are often ignored all day long.
Communicator seems like a quick and easy method for establishing a dialogue that doesn’t impose but does provide me with feedback. Clearly to persuade him it should be installed I needed to provide him with a business justification.
Well try as I might he just can’t see it. The multi-tasking is lost on him as he has the typical “I’m a bloke. I don’t do multi-tasking.” response. I explain that men I work with can multi-task and the response comes back that they can’t be “real men.”
When I explain the convenience of the application he just says “I prefer to pick up the phone.” Except of course he doesn’t phone me.
Any suggestions on further persuasion techniques would be welcome.
4 comments:
Persuasion techniques are unwelcome.
His behaviour is perfectly understandable, maybe even admirable.
That's the way to be, free. It's why we prefer email to IM. It's why we prefer getting texts to phone calls. It's why we go fishing.
All for a bit of offline time.
One still has the choice to be offline. That's the beauty of this solution.
The intention is to increase choice not restrict movement or thought.
Well, I had to persuade two people in the team as well. Both men. And I did say as well "you can turn it off if you want to."
But it is just easier to see if someone is available or not and see if they have a moment.
The downside is, if you have a presentation set up on your laptop and forget to set it to "do not disturb" - there could be windows popping up with rather silly messages - on the overhead projector for everyone to see...
;)
Re the presentation interruption, whilst I've seen that, I'd say "you can turn it off."
But I've given up. The husband won't sign up for it and neither will the boss.
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