Putting the Culture Back in 'Corporate Culture'

© Katherine Stanfield

Imagine a group of individuals: relating to each other every day, sometimes sharing tasks, sometimes working separately, who value community and play, who wish to enrich their lives, excel at what they do, work with purpose, and are always on the search to find their place in the world. They have complicated relationships that shape expectations of themselves and others.

Now is this a description of a Maasai village in Tanzania, or is this a description of the employees in a North American business.

Both.

Dangerous Emails: Are people reading it the way you wrote it?

©glowinthedarkpictures.com

Every time we come up with a new way of communicating with each other, we also develop new and interesting ways to really offend each other. A quote that is sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde goes something like: "I'm sorry I wrote such a long letter, I didn't have time to write a shorter one." It is very difficult to maintain any sense of tone when we condense our words. The shorter the communication, the more tone we tend to leave out, for the sake of information. With fewer tonal clues put in by the writer, the more the reader tends to put in. Thus the easier it is to misinterpret the intent behind the message.

With email, texting, Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging, our means of communicating is getting shorter and shorter.

And a lot of people are getting really pissed off.