Harvard Business Publishing

We have a Car Pool to Office everyday amongst 4 of us. Each morning the person taking the car sends out a Text Message (SMS) to all others confirming the time. Everybody replies back on Text Message confirming whether he is joining or not.

If a person is late by a few minutes, he sends a Text message to all confirming the new time. This entire co-ordination happens over Text Messaging only. No Phone calls are ever made. We are using this method very effectively over the last 5 years.

Text Messaging has become a very convenient way of communicating near Real time without intruding too much (phone call does that).

I have a woman who is bringing her group to Madison to learn about attracting and retaining young talent. To set everything up, we've communicated purely by phone calls despite my attempts otherwise. I can't tell you how irritating I found it. I wanted to scream, "Use email! Text me! Stop calling me!"

I don't know many people - CEOs included - that rely so heavily on the phone calls anymore.

I have to confess . . . I'm a boomer who dosen't text. Having said that, we as a family have figured out how to communicate using our "device of choice." My son or daughter will phone text to my blackberry and we all send the message via email to my husband. Despite differences in device preference, what dosen't change is the brevity of the message. And somehow, despite the brevity, we still manage to communicate 'enough' subtext to get the message across :)

I wonder how internal corporate communications will change over time. We are already seeing articles in WSJ about how Gen Y's are using text language in an email format . . . scandalous, or is it?

My name is Carolina Navarro from Mexico City. I'm editor in a magazine called CONTACTO. The themes are specially selected for bussiness men and CEOs from all kind of enterprises. I'm working right now on a paper about the age disparing between the workers of any organization. I'm intersted in making you an interview for the article. We could make it by e mail or by phone, it's your choise. I wuld realy apreciatee if you could email me as soon as posible.

In Europe texting is much more common that in the US - I believe due to the formerly high telecom costs here; and once engaged with it have to admit it is a really good way to communicate, note a recent study showed that Gen yers went from texting to video (in an organization that had it) skipping voice entirely.

It's a shame on US government if it cannot provide free education and cost effective medical care to its generation Y. This is effectively being done in many of Indian states like Kerala, inspite of being a much smaller economy than the US. Children should be freed from the burden of earning money for their education and medical needs. Instead, their parents and government should ensure their education and healthcare needs without the burden of this being put on their shoulders.

The problem seems to be in commercialisation of these two services, education and healthcare. People will be better benifited if the fedaral government takes care of these two services.