Okay, now let's, this might be a short coffee, you know we always say this, or maybe we do both, I don't know. Maybe the first one. The last one was, actually, that was tilted. Yes, well, listeners, we have, we've got a coffee here going already, so you're very welcome to join us for Management Co-Fay, Management Co-Fay today.
Tim and I are going to be talking here now, we don't know whether this is going to be a five-minute coffee or a 20-minute coffee, because we've got a topic pending from the last cafe, so you're very welcome to stay with us. Yes, my name's Pilar Orti, and Tim Verges here with me, and we were talking about, in one of our last coffees, we left pending the subject of Management by Emoji, which really came about, with the use of Slack, Microsoft Teams, any kind of, now almost everything has an emoji thing that you can, I mean, Trello, you can do it as well, and regret the thumbs up to say, I've seen it, but I don't engage with it, you know, I've heard what you say. I wonder if, for example, the thumbs up emoji has become a nod, just a nod saying, I heard you. You know, when we're speaking in real time, we nod and we say, hmm, and stuff like that.
Knowing that, yeah. Yeah, so the thumbs up for me is just, okay, I've heard your message. If it becomes a norm that everyone has to click to show that they've read, it becomes very noisy as well, and then when you don't get your thumbs up, you think, oh, no one's read my message, or what? I just think it's another level of engaging and communication.
I think it's really helpful in that it becomes a sort of shorthand, particularly, like, without it, digital communication can be too severe. Yes. Yeah, and it can be, it can lack color and nuance, and the interaction can be very formal, whereas emojis, particularly with the wonderful range that we have now, you can become very nuanced in what you want to say and how you want to say it. You can express ambivalence, you can use memes, like, it can be fun, like, there's, I think it's really good, I think it's been really helpful.
I'm a big fan. I like the reactions for all the reasons you say, and I love it, and I very rarely put the thumbs up, for example, to a message, because I always have a reaction to it. My favorite one is the face which has a finger on the chin, the thinking one. That's one of my favorite ones, the thinking one, because it's like, let me think about that for a second, which is the equivalent of, I heard you, but I don't have a reply yet.
However, so there's two things. One is that very early on, I think it was Basecamp, or was it, I think it was Basecamp, that did an experiment, an internal experiment. Basically, they realized they were addicted to the likes. I mean, we've heard about this in social media.
They realized that they were, every time someone posted a message, they started to realize that they were waiting for approval, because it's so easy to get the approval with the like, and they ended up, if I can remember correctly, and this was a long time ago that I heard this on, I think it was their podcast or someone else's, that they removed the button for a while, but there was like a real addiction to try to get approval that what you said was being received well by everyone, and before emojis, we didn't do that, because there were no emojis. I mean, you still wait for approval, but like you say, unless you have this culture of reply all and stuff, you were fine with a bit more silence, but suddenly, when there is the opportunity to read, react, and show approval, they found that they were waiting for it, so they changed it. I don't know whether they added, I can't remember if they added more emojis, so it was more nuanced. It wasn't about liking, but about reacting.
I don't know. Like, look back on it and go, oh my god, I'm so much better back there, when you just send something out into the void. I mean, it is better, of course. I think it's more important, and I think I always overthink everything, but I think it's more important than it's given attention to, because it is playful, and because we're coming from a playful place, but I might be wrong.
But isn't that a nice, isn't that a nice addition? So for me, I think an element of like white-heartedness and humor and playfulness at work makes a massive difference, because that's how I am in life in general, and emojis are a wonderful outlet for that, and they're kind of harmless. No, they're not. No, you see, I don't think so, and I think that's...
It's like a tic-tac. Well, you see, that's the thing, is that not all my communication is playful. You know, there are some people who only use platforms like Slack for playful communication. There you go wild.
But if I'm doing all my communication on Slack, and either I'm expected to be reacting with emojis all the time to express what I feel, or if I'm getting emojis, and this is another example I wanted to come to, which is I was working in a team, and someone senior put an angry face on something. Well, it really is such an individual thing, because for you, it adds, or at some point, it adds color or whatever, and a bit more emotion. For me, it adds dissonance, because if someone has something very serious to say, and then they stick an emoji of an angry face, for me, that message has been devalued, because you put a cartoon next to a message that's important. Are you telling me that you're angry, or are you telling me that by putting an emoji, you're trying to soften it?
For me, it's just dissonance. But I know it's not like that for everyone. It is a very, very good tool. An emoji is a tool.
And I think, you see, it's the opposite with me. I think it's a very important tool that's not given enough importance. So I think it's a very useful tool, but I just think it's like, and because it's also used in social. Yeah, so...
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a personal thing. Anyway, sorry. No, but you're right. You're right.
It shouldn't be treated, just because it's, you know, cartoons, it shouldn't be treated as totally harmless, and it should still be taken seriously, absolutely. And thinking about it, like when I say, you know, I'm a big fan of emojis, I've used them or whatever, but like I never used it to express emotions of anger or of frustration or maybe like disappointment, yeah, sadness, you know, empathy for sure, you know, caring, you know, all of the like fun, happy, joy, emotions, absolutely, you know, scared, yeah, a little bit, but never angry, frustrated, I would never be confronting with it. I don't think it's the right format for that. Well, it doesn't confront, an emoji doesn't confront, because it's a cartoon.
Well, also, there's a lot of like, if you post something like, hey, you know, we built our 10 widgets yesterday and people give you the thumbs up, there's no ambiguity there. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's very obvious, but if you say, oh, we built our 10 widgets and someone gives you like an angry face emoji, like there's not enough context, like what are you angry about? All of a sudden, I'm going to spiral into like a million different reasons why I think you could be angry, and you know, as we always talk about, I'm going to come up with something far worse than what you're actually angry about.
However, so now I'm seeing the flip side. Oh, here we go, here we go, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is, no, I'm just, I'm going back on myself. I'm excited, I'm excited.
Okay, so preamble. I'm giving the thumbs up emoji, even though I'm not actually in a spot. I see all the hearts lying, you know, and those things, heart, heart. So my issue is, I think management by emojis, I think I love the title, I think it should be a book.
My issue, I think, is with doing anything with lack of thought, and I think that not thinking through something. Once you think through something, you're entitled to work however you want, then you have, you know, then the consequences are for you to deal with. But, hang on, hang on to that thought, because I want to go back to my original thought, which is, if you are someone, if you are a manager who either, or a person actually, whatever, who has difficulty expressing negative emotions, or that tends to, I think you said keyboard bash at one point, or you're a keyboard warrior, which tends to come down too heavy, the use of emojis can help you. Because if you have difficulty saying, I'm angry with you, but actually putting an angry emoji just takes us a step closer to communicating what you're feeling or stuff, then I'm coming around to thinking that my issue is not with using them, but with mindless use.
I think they even have a place when they start to get a little bit serious, if it's going to help someone just get a little bit closer to what they want to say. That's my thought that came to mind. Yeah, the thing with emojis is it's a language, and it's a language that you co-create. It's not a broadcast language, it has to also have a recipient.
So that was something that I was conscious of, is, it's like you can create your own emojis, you can upload emojis. And so I would go to Slack emoji, and I might just download some new emojis and upload them into Slack. But if I do some, like, I don't know, Homer Simpson emoji, and I send it to someone who's never seen Homer Simpson, that doesn't make any sense, right? So I think that you have to already have some idea of, is this actually going to be received by the person that I have any idea of what it means, and is it going to be received in the way that I want it to?
And some of that stuff you work out as you go, and some of that sort of team norms, and that sort of thing. But I do think, going back to what you were saying before, I reckon if you could come up with a The Emoji Manager, how to manage your team purely by emoji, and promise on the front cover of the book, these 50 emojis are all you need to manage your team, I reckon people would buy the book. Oh, yes. This is so tempting.
I'd be like, I was at the airport, and I'd be like, that's all I need, 50 emojis? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I've got to save this work.
I've got to save this work. And that would be part of the culture that you want to create, because as soon as you start to slim down your communication through emojis, everyone's going to start doing the same as well, because you're saying it's acceptable. And that just means that whether you are distributed or not, whether you're a remote team or not, or whatever level, probably by now everyone has some place where they have emojis. And if it's a place for all conversations to happen, I mean, I know there will be some places which are water coolers, in which case, well, you don't have to worry too much, I think, because probably almost anything goes, and if not, it'll be fine.
However, how we usually set up co-creating that language, that is part of the team culture, and it's part of the team norms. And for many people who are worried about creating culture in remote teams, so this is one aspect. It's the symbols that you're using. It's the coded language, again.
And one kind of emoji will mean one thing in one team, and probably will be slightly different in another, because that's how they use it. And if we're worried about that team cohesion, for example, or somewhere we feel we're lacking some kind of team identity, this can be one place to start with. This is something that we all have plumped around and that we all use in the same way. Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. And we like that, right? We like being in clubs. We like being in teams and secret societies and having other languages.
It's nice. It makes us feel a special part of belonging. One thing I like about emojis is that you can cover a lot of ground without a lot of effort or time. So if you think about all of that digital communication that flies around, you can't just...
If somebody posts something, like, oh, here's my report, and all you write back is, okay, well, great. It doesn't seem like enough. You've got to put a bit more effort into it. So you've got to go, oh, hey, this is really good.
Yeah, yeah. But if you give a heart emoji, they're like, oh, wow, I've got a heart. One thumbs up, that's a heart. I mean, they love it.
They love it. Yeah. And you could have an emoji. I am so practical.
I don't want emotions in the workplace. You can see that I'm out. I don't want emotions. You could also have, like, the thinking emoji, which is my favorite.
And that means we take it to the next conversation. Or you could have, like, again, you, of course, need to be agreeing on all of these, but you could put a pencil emoji, which means, can you write more on this? Because we need to have a longer conversation in the document about it. But I think that what you're saying as well is the shortcuts that it allows us to have, which means that by cutting down on the time we're investing, it doesn't cut down on the effect of the communication.
So it's not just about, like, doing things faster. It's about being able to just be more concise through a visual language. And that is very useful. Yeah.
You've got to, it's a skill, though. I think it's a skill. Oh, for sure. For sure.
You think about all the terminology that gets used in business in general and then within companies even more so, you know, and acronyms and all these abbreviations and that sort of stuff. And part of it is, like, similarly, part of it is to save time. Part of it, I think, is also, you know, people just, like, making stuff up and then you're a bit more complicated or something like they know some secret information or whatever. And I think emojis, you know, they spread a bit of that itch as well.
Like, the way that some things can get adopted by, you know, by a person or by a team or by a group. And then they can come to have sort of alternative meanings. We had some things where, like, there was, like, pre-reading or pre-things before. I think our leadership meeting, yeah, we would record these videos.
All the leaders would record videos and then you'd watch it before you joined the leadership meeting. And one of the managers was like, hey, can you just put an emoji on here so that I know that you've actually seen it before we go into the meeting? And so, you know, people would put, like, I don't know, eyes or thumbs up or whatever. So they could go, oh, I can say I know everyone's watching my video.
Like, you know, when we're talking about it, I know that they know what I'm talking. And I guess that's one of the examples of what you were saying, where, you know, where you agree what the shorthand is and what it's used for. And it's a pretty cool tool for that. I think they're great.
I just, I like to think about stuff and I like the mindful use of them. Yeah, well, what I'm thinking is going back to your... Okay, to the book. Going back to the book, yeah, you're the emoji manager.
Imagine, like, your performance review. You've got your annual performance review. It's like, it's the thinking emoji, a heart emoji, two thumbs up, one angry face. Oh, right.
I think this has gone as deep as we can today with this. Now, this is an issue because one thing that podcasts don't have yet is in most platforms, they don't have emojis yet. Even though we could say, listeners, maybe in some platforms they have, and who knows, maybe people are listening to this, like, in 2024 at the moment, but if anyone is listening in the future. So we'd love to see your emojis, people around the company.
Oh, yeah, in the future they can emoji react to a podcast, but that would be happening in the future. We're already in the past. Yeah, that's all right. That's the nice thing about this media business.
Time traveling is still fantastic. But maybe you can send us a good old-fashioned email, managementcafepodcast.com, or you can go to managementcafepodcast.com and send us a message through there. Well, we did talk for a while about management by emoji or the emoji manager. That's great.
We'd love to hear your thoughts, listeners. Tim, anything else you want to... It's a shame we're not on video now. Oh, the book launch.
The book launch is coming soon. It's the one-minute emoji manager. Who was it? Who did the one-minute manager?
It was like Ken Blanchard. It's the updated version. It's the one-minute emoji manager. Oh, listeners, coffee's definitely over for us.
Now it's over to you. I got very emotional with the emojis. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Management Cafe. You've been listening to Tim Burgess and Pilar Ortiz.
Remember to subscribe to the show on whatever podcast stuff you use, and if you want to get in touch, you can do so over at managementcafepodcast.com. Coffee's over for us. Now it's over to you. Thank you for listening.