At iRobokid — FLITE Labs & iRobokid Mumbai , we work very closely and continuously with schools and most of our planning for teaching or training is matched with school calendars & their timetables. In the past 7 odd + years, we have reached late or missed a schedule maybe a couple of times & that is something we pride ourselves on.
Most of this credit can be attributed to Vishal Shah who has a fanatical approach on punctuality / timing & response & he often leads by example on this, very rarely do you not see him at 8.15 opening the office or responding to messages or mails or customer queries at 6 Am.
Another person who deserves some credit is Stan who was our chief mentor for our team of basketball coaches, who brought in a professionalism to that that whole system that we always lacked. His emphasis to the team who see messages on WhatsApp’s or mails and to get them acknowledge the receipt & reading of that message was like trying to restore a dying art.
His simple “ Ok Noted “ or “Ok Done” has solved so many layers of (mis) communication & time to comprehend that its easily almost the most underrated hack in a communication system.
While in our professional status we strictly & continuously keep meandering about quicker response times / acknowledgements etc. as a part of our ability to be always one step ahead in customer service / experience & implementing that across teams, mostly successfully, Fortunately or un, we don’t have those compulsions in our personal lives and that’s where lies my quandary
In the new world, talking is almost a dying art as well, teens just prefer to chat / text or message. — George Bernard Shaw sums it up well “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place “
While they have replaced the conversation where the response was immediate, this technology cover is conveniently not being used to mimic the whole way a normal conversation would be held.. In a world with blue ticks / unseen messages and hidden notifications, we find many such windows to escape an immediate reply or completely not acknowledge till we need to.
We all have those WhatsApp groups and chats, where we encounter variety of people. From the ones who respond almost so quickly, the quick gun Muruguns on the emojis , to the others who respond ONLY when they want to IF they want to, then there are those whose phones are almost away and they reply everything at the end to finally the others who almost don’t / never respond or even wish a “ happy birthday “ the next day. It takes all sorts, but is there a method behind this madness or its just happenstance /intentionality ?
In today’s world when people are checking their phones multiple times a minute, its somehow difficult to believe that people have not seen the message or are unable to, maybe it’s the intent or where the priority of the sender / message lies.
A quick search on AI, provides the following results, an average American checks the phone 144 times a day, so that’s about every 10 minutes. It also further reveals that 95 % of people read texts within 3 minutes of it being sent & average response time is 90 seconds after being read!!
Being a Type A, with a quick response / ack time (as I see no point in not & don’t know any better), its somehow become necessary to bite our own tongues as just because you have read it and replied to expect the same from the other one is a bit unfair & also at times self-depreciating. In an article in the Atlantic — Sherry Turkle says “ “You create for people an environment where they feel as though they could be responded to instantaneously, and then people don’t do that. And that just has anxiety all over it,” — Seems like I have a “ me “ problem “ 😊 .
Is it ok for someone to not like a forward you sent & should you retaliate in kind even though you actually liked it ? Is it ok for someone to send a wild video in the middle of everyone wishing a congratulations to someone ? Are there are any strictly any DOS or DONTS (like caps 😊). Are there any unspoken rules like how K vs an Ok is the sign of mild irritation ?
Adam Grant has a great different take on it “Unless its urgent, the true test of a relationship isn’t the speed of response, it’s the quality of attention “ of course that’s wheeling away from the rules that normal conservations follow, but different times and different rhymes.