All the recent ‘toing and froing’ in Northern Ireland’s blog space and via Twitter has reminded me of the best bit of business advice I ever got (courtesy of Michael O’Neill, then COO of First Derivatives Plc).
At the time I was setting up the First Derivatives / Kx Systems sales office in New York, only a year or so after entering the financial software business. Operating in a field office thousands of miles and multiple time zones from the mother ship is one of the most frustrating activities you could ever be involved with. You have to learn to be completely self sufficient as support from home is never what it needs to be; especially if the people delivering the support haven’t worked in a field office – everything takes ten times longer than it should and isolation is the name of the game. Conversely you are in the front line for all customer complaints, issues and opportunities; at the time I was doing twenty+ customer meetings a week and things were a long way from rosy. Add in the effect of the fruits of the big city bankrolled by living life on expenses and there is an explosive mix.
The net effect was that I was bombarding Brian Conlon (FD CEO) with frequent rants, venting frustration, and putting the world to rights; cc’ing half the company at the time, i.e. committing career suicide.
Michael eventually took me for a pint to get in front of the situation. He pointed out that 90% of the therapeutic benefits of venting by email come from the process of carefully drafting the mail in the first place; but 100% of the negative impacts for you (i.e. career suicide) come from hitting send. So the advice was to draft away, but never hit send and leave the mail in the drafts directory.
The world is even more digital than it was ten years ago. The problem with emails, blogging or Twitter is that the comment is out there long after you’ve calmed down and will come back to haunt you. If you send an angry email (tweet, blog post, or Facebook comment) it is absolutely guaranteed that it will be forwarded on to a dozen other people. It will reflect badly on you, whether you’re right or wrong.
Closing the loop, my master plan was always to write a book on my time in New York with First Derivatives, Wombat and NYSE Euronext as told by the emails left in the drafts directory. I planned to title it “The Cowboys have Landed”*. Unfortunately I checked a few weeks back and my NYSE drafts directory had been wiped… c’est la vie! and probably for the best.
– Danny Moore
*A reference to my background in dairy farming of course!