Various Companies (#417)
Technology has made communication much easier. It's also made most people worse at it.
I was surprised to learn Monday was a really important day for me.
When I logged onto LinkedIn to write a post, I had over 20 direct messages, far more than I’d typically expect to find after a weekend.
The messages were all congratulating me on my “work anniversary.” They ranged from a simple “Congrats” to some notes asking me a question related to the anniversary prompt, and even multiple messages that said, “Congrats on your six-year anniversary at Various Companies!”
I was confused and initially thought it was a glitch, until I did a little digging. Apparently, six years ago on Monday, I had grouped a few of my different board, consulting and advisor roles into one professional experience on LinkedIn. When Monday hit, LinkedIn shared with my network that it was my work anniversary and offered several pre-written prompts for my connections and followers to send me directly, with the name Various Companies prepopulated.
I find this odd event to be a sad commentary on the world today; it exemplifies how we value speed and convenience over depth and connection. Had any of those 20 messengers taken the time to actually read or update the message they were sending, they would have realized there wasn’t anything to celebrate and might have saved themselves a little embarrassment.
I have a love-hate relationship with technology—this is especially true for AI, which will soon be embedded in almost every product that we use. For all of the ways automated technology makes life more effective and efficient, it has simultaneously made us more careless and less authentic.
This is especially true in the professional world, where we’ve proven our willingness to spend time doing things at high quantity and low quality that have a limited chance of success, rather than focusing on doing a few things with excellence. The latter approach has almost always been the key to sustained success in jobs that require building relationships, but even in these roles too many people end up committing to laziness at scale.
Sadly, the same can be said for how we conduct ourselves in our personal relationships and communication. In this digital age, the art of personal communication is eroding. We're losing our ability to engage in meaningful conversations, and instead we’ve given into a new status quo where a “like” or a thumbs up is considered an adequate response to someone’s life event. Are we really connecting with others when we do this? Or are we using technology to go through the motions of staying in touch? I suspect we’re doing too much of the latter, leaving us trapped in a cycle of superficial engagement that leaves us feeling more isolated than ever.
One of the main benefits of social media and communications technology is it’s much easier to stay in the loop on what’s going on with the people that we know, whether it’s a birth, a death, an important life event or even a meaningful work anniversary. Imagine if, instead of sending an AI-generated message, we used those prompts as reminders to send a personal note, set up a phone call, or even meet in person to connect, without any networking objectives.
My LinkedIn anniversary was a lesson in how not to use technology. Not only did those who reached out to me not gain any benefit, but the vast majority looked careless and shallow, which was the complete opposite of what I would guess was their intention.
We are all guilty of doing things too quickly and carelessly today, but communication is one of the areas where authenticity and depth, not convenience, should be the goal.
Quote of The Week
“The more social media we have, the more we think we're connecting, yet we are really disconnecting from each other.” - JR, Artist
Have a great weekend!
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This captures how I feel about about social media and the reason I largely abstain, although see more value in LinkedIn. We’re ‘more connected’ but ‘connecting less’.
Ironically my immediate instinct was still to throw a ‘like’ on the post.
I grew up with a kid who passed away several years ago. People still wish him a happy birthday on Facebook annually, clearly unaware of the adjacent tribute posts and heavenly wishes. You are right on, Bob.