Monday, September 6, 2010

Influencers tend to make long calls

I stumbled upon an interesting note from the Economist: Influential people, or those at high social pecking order, tend to make long calls, whereas calls they receive are generally short, stemmed from knowledge of telecommunication companies.

I asked the question why, and attempt to contemplate an answer myself:



  • What managers (and influencers) do a lot as part of their job is communicate (Baxter 2010), and they prefer to do so verbally (Mintzberg 1990), explains why they tend to have prolonged conversations through the phone

  • Delegation by managers to subordinates involves goal settings (Blanchard & Johnson 1982), information dissemination (Mintzberg 1990), and relationship building (Fisher & Ury 1991). All of these require investment in communication time.

  • Influencers tend to have broad networks (Gladwell 2000) and managers need to communicate inter-departmentally (Kanter 1989), this kind of conversation need to be exchanged by elaborated discussions

  • Modern autonomous workforce usually call their boss to report status or present quick information or propose solution they have already had in mind, so they tend to quickly wrap up their conversations in short forms


All in all, this is an interesting point in social interactions.


Reference



Baxter, J., 2010, ‘Managing agile organisations’, School of Accounting, Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales, 2010


Blanchard, K., Johnson S., 1982, ‘One minute manager’, Morrow, 1982


Gladwell, M., 2000, ‘The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference’, Little Brown, 2000


Fisher, R., Ury, W., Patton, B., 1991, ‘Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In’, Penguin, 1991


Mintzberg, H., 1990, ‘The manager’s job: folklore and fact’, Harvard Business Review, March-April, pp. 1163-176, 1990


Kanter, R. M., 1989, ‘The new managerial work’, Harvard Business Review, November-December, pp. 85-171, 1989





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