The longer I observe electronic communications, the fewer things amaze me. Simply put, people make the dumbest statements in email, IM, text messages, and Twitter – statements they would never make if they were written down on paper. If you are involved in this industry long enough, few things people put in electronic communications will surprise you.

To that end, I’d like to propose a new, natural law of electronic communication. (Side note – I’ve never had any type of theorem, principle, conjecture, or law named after me, so this is my attempt.) Here goes:

Mark’s Law of Rapid Communication: The more rapid the communication medium, the less responsible the content.

What I’m stating is a universal property of communication. As the time between composing and transmitting a message decreases, the responsibility of the content decreases a corresponding amount. Mathematically this can be described as:

where t is time between composition and send and r is the responsibility level of content

(any good law can be expressed in a formula).

Many, many years ago (about the time I was in high school) we wrote letters and there was time between when we wrote letters and put them in the US Postal Service mailbox. I like to think a little more thought went into what we wrote back then. At least I can’t remember writing a letter, mailing it, and then wishing I hadn’t. When I first starting using email in the early 1980s communication became more rapid and convenient. I remember writing a scathing email to an (ex)girlfriend, and hours wondering if I really meant to say everything I put in the email. Now in the world of texting, IM, and Twitter the communication is one, fluid motion: think-it-write-it-send-it. Message sent.

As with any good natural law, we can draw a number of corollaries. And my law is no exception:

Mark’s Law Corollary #1: Responsible content decreases regardless of the level in the organization. There are those who believe that Mark’s law only applies to a younger generation of workers who grew up on video games. “It’s the kid’s and their iPhones.” I disagree. I’ve seen irresponsible content across all levels of the organization. Take Angelo Mozilo, the former CEO of Countrywide whose emails deploring the high-risk loans that had become Countrywide’s stock-in-trade, contrary to public statements. What was he thinking putting this in an email?

Mark’s Law Corollary #2: The first victim of rapid communication is context. When we communicate in snippets, context gets lost. All of us have been guilty of sending messages without proper context where our message was misconstrued. I know of one manager who was almost fired for sending one of his female employees a text message asking her to meet him at the hotel; turns out he was arranging a group offsite. Context matters.

Mark’s Law Corollary #3: It’s those “other people” who create irresponsible content. All of us have been told to be careful about what we write in email. We’ve seen the consequences of the inadvertent message. Therefore, it’s always those “other people” who write irresponsible content. Never us. As it is always these “other people,” this should be a solvable problem then. I keep on looking for these “other people” who aren’t the problem, and have yet to find them. It must be a pretty small group. And when we find them, we will only have to retrain very few.

Mark Diamond is President & CEO of Contoural, Inc. You can e-mail Mark and markdiamond@contoural.com .

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