by Frank

I recently attended a presentation on how companies must adapt to a changing business environment where six generations of active workers will be interacting with one another.  Pretty startling, isn’t it?  In particular, they pointed out the various preferred forms of communication among generations influential in business today:

• The Greatest Generation – memos
• Baby Boomers – meetings
• Generation X – computers and e-mail
• Generation Y and the Homeland Generation – mobile devices (i.e. Blackberry and iPhone)

What this means as time marches on is that all companies – not just those in the marketing communications business – need to think about what I call the communications endgame: how will we collectively communicate with each other most effectively 5, 10, 20 years from now?  Is your company ready for a future economic culture no longer consuming messages via desktop computer, phone system, “snail” mail, or office meeting, but a constantly telecommuting populace exchanging rapid-fire messages and (even financial) transactions via mobile devices?

If that sounds heady, perhaps think in these terms, and you’ll get a better idea of what I’m talking about:

• Can you convey important information and generate target audience interest using a simple text message?
• What will your PowerPoint or video presentation look like on an iPhone?
• How can you take advantage of mobile technology to increase sales, motivate and energize your current customer base, or reach target audiences unfamiliar with your services?
• Perhaps most provocatively, how can you distribute intellectual capital accumulated over years and possibly decades through much smaller, quicker technologies without losing critical data and impact?

Depending on the information to be communicated, there may not be easy answers for some of these questions.  The important lesson here is to consider not only the current medium but also the future medium that your target audience is likely to utilize to receive your messages in order to increase your probability of immediate and long-term effectiveness.

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