Blackberry 1(01)
How many times a day do you check your Blackberry or smart phone? If you’re Barack Obama, you’ll probably be checking it less. As you may have heard, the President gets to keep his Blackberry but, for security reasons, his e-mail list is restricted to a very select few. Still, with the Obama Blackberry story as inspiration, David Shipley, author of Send: Why People E-mail So Badly and How to Do It Better, offered this bit of Blackberry etiquette to the President on NPR’s All Things Considered. It’s 3 minutes long and worth a listen.
Click to connect to the NPR audio.
While Shipley has his tongue slightly in cheek, he has some good advice for any leader using a Blackberry. The misuse of these devices can have an enormous negative impact on your personal, team and organizational presence. Constant Blackberry use can get you so far down into the weeds that you don’t give yourself the space to think about the bigger picture. The Blackberry is the ultimate tool for micromanaging your team because it allows you to stay in constant contact with them. It can be a real image killer as well when people start talking about your propensity to send e-mails at 4 in the morning.
What’s your biggest Blackberry pet peeve? What, if anything, have you done to address it? What’s your favorite piece of advice that David Shipley is offering the President?