Two very odd things have happened at work recently. The first oddity happened when the building that houses our offices underwent one day without water. The Street Department and local public utility company were replacing a sewer line, so they turned off our water to keep someone from flushing a toilet in the middle of the repairs. The second oddity happened four days ago when there was a thunderstorm that produced a lot of air to ground lightning strikes. It just so happened that the building that houses my Internet Service Provider took a direct hit and poof! there went my primary business connector.

What do these two things have in common? They were reminders for me of how much I depend upon the necessities of life every day. You don’t realize how often you use water until you cannot use water. There was a time in our not so long ago past that indoor plumbing was considered a luxury. To have clean, running water coming to you inside of a building instead of pumping it into a bucket and carrying it was thought to be only for the elites. My, how times have changed. To live without indoor plumbing is unheard of anymore. In the same way, I believe the internet has become a necessity to business. It has become to business what indoor plumbing is to daily life. We all know that we use the internet a lot. You would not be reading this article without it. But take it away for a few days and you will find out just how much you lean on an i-solution for just about everything you do. I know, because 90 hours ago I was cut off from the world wide web and it feels like I am standing beside the railroad tracks with my briefcase in hand, watching trains full of all the people I work with speed right past me.

Think about these particular functions in your office. What happens to your communication functions without an online connection? Obviously without the web you do not have email. Do you have a phone system that is dependent upon the internet, like a VoIP? Do you have an integrated system for messages, customer contacts, calendaring, etc. all using the internet for the transfer of key day-to-day information? Let’s take the communication question a bit further. What about your money? Are your financial dealings primarily online? Do you bank online, make payments electronically, use accounting software that generates tax reports that are sent via the internet? Try hiring an employee without the web. Attempt to place a help wanted ad without the assistance of Career Builder or Monster. Try to do a background screening without the connectivity of the net. It is all a part of communications, even though we don’t often think of it that way. In our business, we routinely purchase and download files from our vendors. That may be photography, graphic design files, text documents for a press release, etc. Without the internet to deliver these items, our business grinds to a halt (believe me, I am living this as I write this.) No water, no internet: do you see the parallel?

Of course with any work on water lines, there are precautions that the water company will make you aware of. I found a nice little door hanger that told me that when the water came back on, there might be a rusty color in the water for a day. It let me know that whenever there is a drop in water pressure, I should boil any water that we might be consuming in the office. I mention all of this to bring up a key point about i-communications. The thought of being cut off from all internet connectivity may make you a bit uncomfortable. But what is communicated from your company when you are fully functional? There are precautions that should be taken in all business communications, but particularly in i-communications. Saying nothing in business may be better than saying the wrong thing loudly. And the web has a way of taking the whispers of a simple message and broadcasting it over a bullhorn that turn into PR nightmares. Robert Luhn from PC World¹ chronicles some gaffes submitted by readers. It includes the insurance employee who replied to an email containing a sales proposal for a client. The employee lamented that the client really didn’t need the coverage in the proposal and was somewhat of a sucker for even considering it. The only problem is that the employee hit "reply to all” and, as you may have guessed, the customer’s email was listed in the reply. It is imperative in the fast paced world of communications to know whose address is in the send portion of an email. Even then, it is always a good idea to keep electronic messages (be it text, email, Twitter, etc.) to a minimum, positive and business like. What you type will have a long life as it gets forwarded again and again. Jokes and innuendos can be misconstrued when out of context. Trying to express emotion in emails is not advisable. Angry emails get even angrier without the non-verbal cues of face-to-face communications.

Email is not the only danger. We have all heard of people who have posted something on a social media site that came back to bite them later. The world is a very connected place. A few hours on the internet can do great damage to your reputation. For instance, in April 2009, two Domino’s Pizza employees made a prank video and posted it on YouTube. Among other things, the video showed one employee putting food items up his nose and then adding them to sandwiches to be delivered. According to an article in the New York Times, in three days, over one million people had viewed it. Online surveys showed the public perception of Domino’s food quality had tanked in a matter of hours after the video was posted. The two employees were fired over their little prank and face legal charges.² Beyond the customer opinion polling, social media sites have comment boards. Anyone can leave an opinion behind and that can be damaging to your corporate image and you have virtually no control over what is posted. Make sure you are using sites that let you delete comments or edit content.

Here are a few simple rules in regards to i-communications.

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1. Doh! The Most Disastrous E-Mail Mistakes by Robert Luhn. PC World, June 3, 2008