Christmas Letters

Used to be folks would write to each other all during the year, then a card sufficed with short notes at Christmas. When the Christmas Letter became fashionable it, at first, was a sort of a state of the family recap of the year. Too lazy to have corresponded. Now social networks have taken the place of letter writting, but my perception is even though they are quite broad, the sites (At least the posts) lack depth.

An early issue with email was bandwidth. Lenghthy and detailed correspondence was discouraged and your dial up connection could not handle the bites transmitted over the phone line. DSL, broadband, and FIOs connections corrected those problems, but unless there are large attachments the details in the email are still wanting.

Communicating the details is an important skill for the leader or the follower. Too much and you loose your audience, too little and an incorrect decision at worst follows or at best frustration for the recipient. It is still a balancing act with which this writter struggles. For readers from the banking industry there has been considerable attention paid by regulators about disclosure required by a casual email to an FI customer. An example of too little, and anxiety of too much. As 2012 dawns it may be a good time to look at how you communicate to stakeholders with eye to too much or too little.

Happy Holidays.