A Conversation With Grace Aldridge Foster of BoldType
If this were a Friends episode — which is becoming a recurring premise in these show notes — this would be "The Other One About Writing." Guest Grace Aldridge Foster shares her passion for that most essential element of email, writing!
How would it feel to face a room full of Green Berets and tell them their writing needs some work? Grace sheds quite a bit of light on that, as she's done it repeatedly! Even top-notch soldiers, according to Grace, often need to work on their writing skills — including email. BLUF - Bottom Line Up Front — doesn't always do the job.
This conversation wanders as much or more as the average email thread, but at heart it's a couple of people who value and care about the power of language comparing notes on the challenges of using language effectively and well in now-mostly-digital channels. Are reverse-threaded email messages just DUMB? Why do we still do that? If you use the right emoji, did you just make a faux pas that tells everyone you're out of date? How the heck would you know?
Fair warning — if you listen to this conversation, which you should, you'll probably end up thinking "My company should hire BoldType to help everyone write just a LITTLE bit better. That would pay for itself 100x in a month."
Super-fun, super-smart, super-interesting guest. Don't miss this one.
TRANSCRIPT
A Conversation With Grace Aldridge Foster of BoldType
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[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the Future of Email. My guest today from Washington, D. C., correct, area?
[00:00:16] Grace Aldridge Foster: I have moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, but. Oh, even
[00:00:19] Matthew Dunn: more interesting. Grace, Grace Aldridge Foster. I think it's fair to call you a writing expert, Grace, having read your, read your background.
[00:00:27] Matthew Dunn: Uh, tell me a bit about you.
[00:00:29] Grace Aldridge Foster: Yeah, sure thing. Um, yes, I, I, um, live in North Carolina now with my dog, Indiana Jones. Um, what kind of
[00:00:39] Matthew Dunn: dog?
[00:00:40] Grace Aldridge Foster: He's an adventurer and a scholar. He, he's a shepherd doodle. He's half German shepherd and half poodle. And yeah, um, maybe he'll make an appearance. And, um, yeah, I'm the co founder of Bold Type LLC.
[00:00:53] Grace Aldridge Foster: I started that company with my, um, business partner, Casey Mink, and in 2018, after we met, um, [00:01:00] in graduate school, we were both getting a master's in English thinking, what do we do with this now? And the rest is history.
[00:01:08] Matthew Dunn: You got two masters in that area, right?
[00:01:12] Grace Aldridge Foster: Yes, I do.
[00:01:13] Matthew Dunn: Okay, so we'll, we'll get to email and writing and all that other corporate stuff eventually, but I've lived this as well.
[00:01:20] Matthew Dunn: It's a little weird going from the halls of grad school to, to corporate in business.
[00:01:27] Grace Aldridge Foster: Oh, absolutely. I mean, for so many reasons, but you know, especially because I'm a, I'm a writing expert. I mean, the, the way you are trained to write in academia is basically the exact wrong way to write in any context.
[00:01:43] Matthew Dunn: Bless you for saying it. Why, what, what, what's wrong? I agree. What's wrong about it in, in your take?
[00:01:49] Grace Aldridge Foster: Yeah, well, I say this with full respect to the many academics in my life that I, that I love and appreciate. But, you know, I think a lot of academics are writing, um, to show [00:02:00] off what they know. And, and they have to.
[00:02:03] Grace Aldridge Foster: I mean, I'm Yeah. I'm really not roasting them for that. Right. The whole system is set up for this. Um, so, you know, typically academic writing is of course pretty loquacious. It's, uh, lots of big words. It's, it's long winded. It's, it's all that. Um, and also it's very, it's often very focused on this is what I know.
[00:02:23] Grace Aldridge Foster: Let me share my expertise with you. Let me show, you know, let me, let me share all the details that I know. Um, But email communication in particular, but really any other type of writing outside of that context is not really about what you know. It's about connecting with your audience. It's a conversation.
[00:02:41] Grace Aldridge Foster: It's about inviting them in. And so I think, you know, there are a lot of really tactical things you learn to do in academic writing that you should not do in any other kind of writing. Don't put your thesis statement, you know, as like the last sentence in your first paragraph. That's like, we know that that's a dead [00:03:00] zone.
[00:03:00] Grace Aldridge Foster: People will skip over it when they're skimming and scanning your writing. Don't save your conclusion for the end, you know, lead with your mic drop, right? Like, so there are really tangible things you learn to do in academic writing that
[00:03:11] Matthew Dunn: are
[00:03:11] Grace Aldridge Foster: just not
[00:03:12] Matthew Dunn: right. Including the Including the colon and the second piece of the title, which is my gosh.
[00:03:19] Matthew Dunn: Yes. Right. Dead giveaway. Uh, spend some time in academia.
[00:03:25] Grace Aldridge Foster: I'm definitely a serial offender in my academic career of that.
[00:03:29] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I mean, and, and it is dodgy affair label. Okay, like, yeah, somehow academic writing and I realize it's, you know, it's focused on a narrow and expert audience and that's a fairly key distinction as well, right?
[00:03:43] Matthew Dunn: If I'm an academic writer and fill in the blanks, I'm going to assume that the people reading my output are interested in or close to expert in the stuff themselves. Like we're talking in code. Yes. To some extent, right? Yes.
[00:03:58] Grace Aldridge Foster: Yes. And,
[00:03:59] Matthew Dunn: [00:04:00] and email and business communications, it certainly happens inside companies, in my experience, that you end up talking in code and jargon and internal references and things like that.
[00:04:12] Matthew Dunn: But generally speaking, your audience isn't necessarily have the interest or time. To be in on the code.
[00:04:19] Grace Aldridge Foster: It's so true. And if you think about kind of the at least, you know, I'm my backgrounds in the humanities. If you think about kind of the point of the academic research, you know, people are taking something that seems simple and their job is to tease the complexity out of it.
[00:04:34] Grace Aldridge Foster: You know, it's it's to it's to probe the complexities of something that seems simple. But in almost any other context, your job as a professional is to take something that seems complex and simplify it for other people. So the aims of your writing are completely different.
[00:04:53] Matthew Dunn: Almost the opposite, right?
[00:04:54] Grace Aldridge Foster: Yeah.
[00:04:55] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Almost opposite. You've worked with a wide variety of folks [00:05:00] in, um, in, in the worlds that you've touched in your business, including the military. I was interested to see, tell me about that.
[00:05:09] Grace Aldridge Foster: Yeah. I had no idea that Navy SEALs also send emails until I started working with them. Um, yeah, it's, I, I started doing that work, uh, about eight years ago now, I was still a grad student and kind of got recruited to teach.
[00:05:23] Grace Aldridge Foster: Um, To teach concise writing to special operations teams. And so I, um, I was flown down to Southern Pines, North Carolina, which is outside of Fort Bragg. And, uh, I showed up to shadow, uh, a class, you know, that was
[00:05:40] Grace Aldridge Foster: then the founder of the company, uh, that morning goes, Hey, you know, I had a meeting come up at Fort Bragg today, now Fort Liberty. So you got this, right? And I was like, what are you talking about? Got what? And he ushered me into a room with 16 green berets and left. I didn't see him the rest of the day. I taught the class, I [00:06:00] guess it went well because I'm still doing it eight years later, but yeah.
[00:06:05] Matthew Dunn: And, and I could get the need to be concise. Um, you know, no, what, no battle plan survives the first minute of the battle or whatever the quip is. Uh, what's the biggest adjustment you've seen as. helping your students make in their writing in, in that particular context, military. Yes. Well, I guess some of the, some of the background or the context for why these folks need writing training is that, um, you know, a lot of them enlisted out of high school or, um, or whatever.
[00:06:38] Grace Aldridge Foster: Now, now they're, you know, doing these, uh, very high stakes operations. They have to write reports and those reports get passed up, you know, Sometimes they end up at the Pentagon, right? And so you have, you know, people who are, um, highly trained professionals, extremely smart, extremely capable, but they're being tasked to write for a really high level [00:07:00] audience when they haven't specifically had that training.
[00:07:02] Grace Aldridge Foster: So that's kind of the context for why, um, we come in and teach writing classes. And. And I think the two things, it's two sides of the same coin that I see that we have to adjust for, help them adjust for the most often, is just level of detail. Because you get two extremes in the military, and this is true for other industries as well.
[00:07:20] Grace Aldridge Foster: But you either have folks who include, they're way too short and direct, and there's not nearly enough detail. And then on the other side, you have folks who are way too into the weeds, you know, their subject matter So, so helping them gauge the appropriate level of detail for the particular genre or format.
[00:07:40] Grace Aldridge Foster: And then for that audience is, is really what we focus on. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It makes it, it makes a ton of sense. And I can, I can see how there'd be a temptation to land on either side. You've got highly skilled, highly trained, pretty darn deadly. Folks who are probably in at least some of them are [00:08:00] like right writing report scares the bejeepers out of me, right?
[00:08:03] Grace Aldridge Foster: Oh, yeah, I don't get to I don't get to read those reports. Yeah, they are classified Yeah, and and you know, it's funny though because I think writing is makes people feel very vulnerable. And so I have these, you know, frankly, these badasses in the room who jump out of planes and they get shot at and all this, but then I asked them to like, I project their email on, on a screen in front of the rest of the class.
[00:08:27] Grace Aldridge Foster: And they're like, it just has a way of, of really making you feel vulnerable and insecure, I think. And, and, um, it's been really interesting to observe. You hit, you hit. One of two brackets about what petrifies people certainly. writing and getting your writing sort of public or read, um, married very closely with public speaking, which apparently is the number one adult fear, right?
[00:08:55] Matthew Dunn: You know, I've never heard that, but that does sound, I'd read it and [00:09:00] I'm sure it's apocryphal and it's probably baloney and I didn't look on Snopes, but, uh, statistically more people are afraid of public speaking than dying. Well, I know, right? And I mean, why? Why is writing and even speaking, different form of writing perhaps, why is it scary?
[00:09:23] Grace Aldridge Foster: You know, I think that your writing speaks for you when you aren't in the room. And so I think there's this, it feels very high stakes because one, all of your, uh, possible say mistakes are there on the page. You know, you can't hide them. Um, but also you aren't there typically when someone has, is reading your writing, you're not physically there.
[00:09:46] Grace Aldridge Foster: To gauge their reaction to, uh, to course correct, you know, you, and also, you know, you don't have your facial expressions in your body language to help ensure that your intended message is getting across. So I think people have a [00:10:00] real fear of being misunderstood in writing. And then I think also they feel very exposed like they're, they're, um, they're, they're very, they worry a lot about their spelling and their punctuation and things like that.
[00:10:13] Grace Aldridge Foster: And I mean, I think some of that fear goes back to like middle school, you know, and your, your teacher was red penning your, your papers or something. Yeah, interesting. Um, this is a lateral maybe but, um, in, in other professional activities, I ended up doing a lot of, uh, voiceover recording, um, as well as having a background in theater before that.
[00:10:39] Matthew Dunn: So as I was doing the voiceover work and writing most of the writing, most of the, um, uh, you know, screenwriting that was being recorded as well. And I got really intrigued and still am with the difference between how we speak and how we write. I know any number of [00:11:00] people I find wonderfully articulate out loud who vapor lock the minute they're setting, uh, you know, fingers to keyboard or pen to paper, or, you know, pick your physical metaphor.
[00:11:14] Matthew Dunn: Like, have you seen that as well? Oh, absolutely. Yes, I have. And, and, uh, this is an old, uh, writing center trick. That's kind of where I got my start was working in college writing centers, you know, doing one on one writing tutoring and that kind of thing. And, um, you know, when, you know, Whenever you, whenever I work with someone who says they have writer's block, they're struggling to get words on the page or they're trying to get started or whatever, I'll ask them, okay, put down your pen, you know, take your fingers off the keyboard and just talk to me, explain to me, you know, let's say it's an academic paper, explain to me your argument or the point that you're trying to make here.
[00:11:51] Grace Aldridge Foster: And people can do it perfectly. They can articulate their thoughts. Yes. Perfectly. And, and so then I'll say, yeah, so just write [00:12:00] that down. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but, but keep running with that for a second and I'll go back to the voiceover stuff. What I noticed, and I've seen the same thing as automated transcripts, like what I'll end up with from this conversation, have become more readily accessible.
[00:12:19] Matthew Dunn: The structure of spoken language is not the same as the structure of written, written language. The perfectly adequate explanation of your key point out loud. Yeah. Isn't the same set of sentences that you'd put on paper. And I, I don't think, I don't think speaking, writing and necessarily exactly the same use of language.
[00:12:40] Matthew Dunn: I suspect we'd see different cells firing if we were looking at a brain scan or something like that. But, but they still got back to the same clear thought like, huh. And man, when you look at it statistically as it will end up talking about AI, darn it. But, um, as you look [00:13:00] at it sort of statistically.
[00:13:01] Matthew Dunn: Speaking a coherent sentence is kind of a bloody miracle. It's complicated thing we're doing. Yeah, we just do it like this. Yes, and usually I think when people do speak Perfect sentences it's because they've written it first. It's because they've prepared a speech or they've You know brainstormed or prepared some in some way But I you know, I think Matthew that one of the reasons that Our writing looks so different from our speaking, like literally the sentences are different, even if, you know, even if we're communicating the same thought is that when people, well, we can't edit our speaking, right?
[00:13:39] Grace Aldridge Foster: So basically, when we speak, it's a rough draft. So I think if you look at a truly bad. Intentionally bad, like rough first written draft. It would look a lot more like, yeah, but writing, you know, the, the end product that people see is not usually where we start. [00:14:00] True, true. Um, good writing is rewriting, right?
[00:14:04] Matthew Dunn: That kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's an interesting, interesting point. So, go back to the Writing Center for a second. That started you off on this helping people master this, uh, ornery, pesky, difficult thing called writing. Is it fun? Uh, is it fun? Is that what you're asking me? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I really, I enjoy doing that kind of work as a student.
[00:14:31] Grace Aldridge Foster: And then, um, and now it's, it's very similar work, just sort of like scaled up and with, with different types of folks. But I often joke that writing training is really like therapy because people have to, um, especially one on one coaching, but even in a group setting. setting, which I do most of my work in a group setting now, but, um, there are so many things that come up for people when you're doing these [00:15:00] sessions, when you're doing coaching sessions or group training.
[00:15:02] Grace Aldridge Foster: And I find it really fascinating because we're talking.
[00:15:05] Grace Aldridge Foster: You articulate yourself is the reason we're there, but we're also working through people's, you know, um, the, the clarity of their ideas, uh, their confidence, the way they want to be perceived by other people, uh, their insecurities. I mean, there's so much that's wrapped up. into it that I, I, I do find it fun.
[00:15:27] Grace Aldridge Foster: I find it really interesting, but it's not necessarily the, um, you know, like the technical skills that I think is fun for me. It's the, it's sort of everything that that's baked into them. Is it also. I'm curious your perspective. Is it also a factor for people, the frustration of the gap between how clear it is in their head and how difficult it is to capture, convey, you know, communicate in a fundamental sense?[00:16:00]
[00:16:00] Grace Aldridge Foster: Yes. People, uh, uh, communicate frustration with that constantly. Yes. And I, again, I think it's because when they start to write, when they start to put pen to paper, they're immediately thinking about the end product. And so they're trying to make that leap immediately to the end product. But we, none of us write in final drafts.
[00:16:22] Grace Aldridge Foster: You know, that, that's just not the way that process works. I don't know. I had a few term papers at about two or two in the morning that were pretty much had to be final drafts or I was Pressure does things to all of us. It does things to all of us. Yes. But it's not a reliable way. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:16:43] Grace Aldridge Foster: Yes. Can you bullshit your way through this? That's really what we're talking about. And some of us are better at that than others. There are ways to sort of conjure up pressure on demand. If that's the way you write best, then there are ways [00:17:00] to sort of produce that for yourself without actually waiting to the, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:04] Matthew Dunn: Um, but so many avenues we could wander around down here, um, one of the ones that occurred to me, it's. I'm being a smarty pants, but it'll actually give us a decent conversational branch. Um, I'm older than you are, and I, I, I remember writing before software and screens and computers. And it was a lot harder because rewriting a page meant rewriting every word on the page.
[00:17:32] Matthew Dunn: And here's the conversational branch that intrigues me, it'll get us to email eventually. That's, that's not, not necessarily the case now. I suspect there's a lot more. Partial rewriting of word sentences, etc. A lot of redrafting, but you're not like throw out that paragraph or retype it verbatim, which you were forced to do with a pen pencil typewriter.
[00:17:55] Matthew Dunn: earlier. Do you think that's changed writing? And do you think it's [00:18:00] changed it for the better? Well, that's a really good question. Of course, I don't think that there's a simple answer to it. Um, I do think that the way people write has changed drastically because of, of technology, for sure. I think that there's a big risk there because Writing and editing are fundamentally different cognitive tasks.
[00:18:23] Grace Aldridge Foster: And what I notice is that people, when they're drafting on computers, they're trying to do both things at the same time. They're trying to write and edit at the same time. So they're trying to multitask. And if any of my, you know, clients or students listen to this, they're going to laugh because they've heard me say this a million times.
[00:18:40] Grace Aldridge Foster: But You know, our brains don't actually multitask. Well, we're task switching when we try to write and edit at the same time in Microsoft Word, when we see the little, you know, wiggle pop up under our word and we're like, Oh, we misspelled that. Or that's not, you know, we get sidetracked. We go back and edit.
[00:18:55] Grace Aldridge Foster: I see people hit backspace, you know, a lot until, until a sentence is [00:19:00] perfect. But, but what you're doing is you're rapidly trying to switch back and forth between writing mode and editing mode. And you end up. You know, with a with a drastic, I think, drop in productivity. So I actually, even though, you know, you certainly can try to write and edit at the same time now in a way that you couldn't when you were writing with pen and paper.
[00:19:20] Grace Aldridge Foster: I encourage clients to try not to do that. You know, if you're using Grammarly, which I recommend, make sure it's turned off while you're in drafting mode. Don't turn it on until you're ready to edit. That kind of thing, because otherwise you're going to really slow yourself down and, um. And kind of paralyze your thought process as you're trying to draft.
[00:19:39] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's wonderful. Like, just that observation about those two things being, which I never hadn't thought of, honestly. Um, but a lot of people write a lot of email, knew we'd get there eventually. Yes. And for the most part, they don't edit, they just [00:20:00] vomit and hit send. And we all end up throwing it back and forth over the net until maybe we eventually have a mutual understanding.
[00:20:11] Matthew Dunn: Maybe not. That's right. I think those mutual understandings don't actually come very often. I think usually that volley ends up with, should we just get on the phone or do we? Yeah. And yet, and yet we use it and volume goes up. Like, you know, it's like, And I know there's marketing, there's spam, stuff like that, but email volumes climbing at, you know, 18 to 20 percent per year, still, despite all the other channels.
[00:20:39] Matthew Dunn: And then we'll, we'll end up talking about texting and other channels, but just, just on that, uh, email is, uh, is sort of the probably primary written digital communication carrier, at least right now. It's got a lot of shortcomings as a channel, doesn't it? Oh, it sure does. It does. [00:21:00] And I think also our communication is so diffuse now.
[00:21:03] Grace Aldridge Foster: I mean, there's email, it's still kind of the cornerstone of workplace communication. But then it is also so common now for folks also to communicate constantly via Slack or Microsoft Teams or Signal or Text throughout the day. I certainly do. And, um, and so I think that part of, well, email is a lot of shortcomings, but then part of the reason that people abuse email so much, and I'm talking interpersonally, not, I mean, there's right, there's like spam and email marketing and sort of the mistakes you can make there, but then also just interpersonally, I think people misuse email constantly.
[00:21:36] Grace Aldridge Foster: And one of the reasons for that is because they're constantly switching back and forth between other writing. Platforms, other other mediums. And so I think people I don't I think it's accidental for the most part, but they're they're not sort of pausing to to to to go. Okay, now I'm sending an email, not a slack message.
[00:21:58] Grace Aldridge Foster: You know, what does [00:22:00] that mean? How does this communication need to look? Different to match the medium that I'm using people, it ends up kind of all just looking the same, which begs the question, why even have multiple channels are going to look the same in all of those places. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and written email tends to look less like.
[00:22:24] Matthew Dunn: A written document and more like speech, but it's neither. I would agree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a weird, it's a weird format. And, and, and, and I've watched this line blur over the years I've worked in the digital communication space, Slack, closer to conversation, still not quite conversation. Um, SMS texting, especially with groups, some of that, some of its own conventions.
[00:22:54] Matthew Dunn: And I mean, for understandable reasons, right? speech. I can't remember verbatim what you [00:23:00] said 10 minutes later. I'm unlikely to, uh, text slack. I can look back up and see verbatim what you said. That's a, that's a big difference right there. Um, but we, we end up in this, we end up in this sort of constant, um, churn.
[00:23:16] Matthew Dunn: Uh, and I'm not sure we're doing each other favors. By throwing the problem back across the net at the other guy. Like, did you mean X? I mean, you phrased that poorly. You're not helping. I'm, I'm, I'm not quite getting to a point, but thoughts about the channels, plural. Yeah, I think, I think you are making really interesting observations.
[00:23:36] Grace Aldridge Foster: And so I guess the, the way I'm thinking about what you're saying is like, if we go back to what email is, it's electronic mail, right? So you think about like what, what an email looks like, it's sort of like this, uh, this sort of perversion of like a letter, you know, of a, of a written letter, like there's still elements, like the greeting, for example, and [00:24:00] the, and the sign off that are.
[00:24:01] Grace Aldridge Foster: That's, that's where that comes from. It's from written letters, you know, and so we sort of have this like strange evolution of like letter writing that's happening via email, kind of, but then we have this whole set of, you know, um, uh, customs around, around email that are unique to it. Yes. And then, you know, Slack and that really, that's instant messaging.
[00:24:23] Grace Aldridge Foster: You know, the point is to be able to communicate instantly and, you know, about something. Email is really meant to be an archive. It's something that you can search for in your inbox. It's, you know, you're documenting something that you can search for later. And I, I think what gets really, really confusing is when a one conversation or one topic starts out an email and migrates to Slack, and then there's a meeting and, and sort of like, so all the communication around this particular topic are like, it's like fragmented, you know, into all of these [00:25:00] places.
[00:25:00] Grace Aldridge Foster: And, um, that's sort of. is sort of mind blowing. It is sort of mind blowing, and here I'll get to pick on one other thing I love to pick on. You couldn't possibly sit down in a lab with white coats and scientists and design a crappier communication format than reverse threaded email. My god, what a cognitive disaster.
[00:25:21] Grace Aldridge Foster: It's so bad. Oh god, right? You see these threads, and I've got some stuff going on involving lawyers right now. Lawyers freaking love email, but some of the threads are older than my children, I think just goes on and and you're like, you're looking at it trying to make sense later reading backwards. Yes, not linearly sort of wait a minute.
[00:25:46] Matthew Dunn: Was this a response to this? How stupid is this? Well, yeah, it's completely bizarre. It's completely nonsensical. But the thing is, too, it's perilous. Like, things get lost. Oh, [00:26:00] absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. They get lost. So it truly is just such an ineffective. Yeah, right? And we keep doing it. We keep doing it.
[00:26:12] Matthew Dunn: And there are, there are, there are a lot of, uh, long to the tooth technical standards involved in forcing that. But even, like, even newer tool sets, and for some reason I'm thinking to pick on SuperHuman, which is an email client. I used it for a while. Um, quite a good email client. Um, didn't change that much.
[00:26:40] Matthew Dunn: None of them have changed it as far as I know. No one's, no one's tried to tackle the gorgon of what happens if we kind of restructure this so you could make sense of the conversational flow. And I suspect it's because, uh, their machinery would melt the first time they hit a lawyer's inbox. I think that's a good, it's a [00:27:00] good suspicion.
[00:27:01] Matthew Dunn: Like it's just nuts. It's just, it's just knuckleheaded. And, and at the same time, I suspect if you went to early, early conversations in this medium, we're calling email, you know, like written turned into digital with the personal, with the personal inbox, which is a big deal attached on either. And I suspect some of the same problems were there from the get go.
[00:27:23] Matthew Dunn: Thank you. It almost seems, it almost seems unavoidable if we had, unless we engineered, somehow engineered it differently from the very beginning. Odd story, I hadn't thought about this in years, but there was a collaboration platform, the name's escaping me, it was created by Ray Ozzie, who was the inventor of Lotus Notes.
[00:27:48] Matthew Dunn: And it was a peer to peer platform, so this is, probably 20 plus years ago, peer to peer platform. And there was an odd side effect in that groove. It was called groove. In [00:28:00] groove, uh, people could be working on the same thing simultaneously. Okay. And I remember it was in a conversation with three other people.
[00:28:08] Matthew Dunn: We were, it was a strategy session for something, but I'd pulled up a mind mapping application, you know, mind mapping. Sure. And I didn't realize that this was going, that this could happen. Everyone was working on the mind map simultaneously, but everyone was working on different stuff. And when it sort of refreshed, I was, I was jarred by how rich and interesting it was.
[00:28:34] Matthew Dunn: Instead of it being a conversational ding, ding, ding, ding around the table where we would build on, you know, thread A and add stuff to it. Everyone literally went off on their own branches thinking that's what we were talking about simultaneously. And then seeing it concretely was just a shocker. And there, there aren't many channels that afford that.
[00:28:57] Matthew Dunn: Well, yeah, I can't think of, [00:29:00] I can't, I can't think of any, maybe, maybe someone listening should go. Ooh, there's an opportunity, but it just struck me how much are the, the cadence of our channels. Constrains collaboration in in its own way. Yeah. As you were speaking, I had never really thought about the fact that literally the layout of email, like sort of like if you think about your inbox and sort of like the linear structure of it, right?
[00:29:27] Grace Aldridge Foster: Like that defines or and sort of constrains the way we use it. Um Wow. Yeah. Just, I'm just like had this vision of an inbox that was not organized that way, but instead had sort of like circles or boxes and, you know, and, um, you could sort of expand them for, to, to see, to see. Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, have you, you, you've, you probably use Gmail.
[00:29:51] Matthew Dunn: It's a state safe assumption. Yes. Gmail bringing the conversational grouping to email. That was, that was [00:30:00] a big shift for some of us who didn't work that way with email for decades or whatever. Like, what do you mean the conversation back and forth about this with the same subject line and the same people is all in one little chunk in the inbox.
[00:30:15] Matthew Dunn: I'm still not sure whether I love it. Um, right. But it's got some conveniences unless you accidentally delete it and, and things like that. But even, even that small reshaping and for technical reasons, That was a not easy, but that was a feasible thing to do, right? Same recipient, same subject line. This is a conversation.
[00:30:36] Matthew Dunn: Okay, cool. I'll bet that has unconsciously really shaped how people use the channel as well. No doubt. Yeah. And, but you know, something that constantly surprises me, uh, when I'm working with clients is just the, the vast differences between Gmail and Outlook, which, you know, for my, I think are the two kind of, and, um, [00:31:00] So, you know, I should tell you, so anytime we, we do, uh, we teach like an email masterclass and I start each email masterclass with asking people to tell me what their pet peeves about email are, because I've learned over time that people will complain.
[00:31:18] Grace Aldridge Foster: incessantly for the full, you know, course about email. If I give them an opportunity to do it in the beginning, we can sort of get it out of the way. And also I know exactly at this point what people are going to say. I know exactly what their complaints are going to be. I never, ever hear a complaint.
[00:31:36] Grace Aldridge Foster: That's one I haven't heard before at this point. You know what I mean? But, like, I think about, uh, just the, I, I think that I always forget, because I work mostly in Gmail and then a little bit in Outlook, and I sort of, uh, forget how different they are. And, uh, you know, one thing that people always complain about with Outlook is how when someone sends you a meeting invite, and then you [00:32:00] accept it, it disappears.
[00:32:02] Grace Aldridge Foster: From your inbox. Right. And it's like, how has no one thought to like change that or fix that yet? Or maybe my info is outdated and they have, um, correct me if I, if I'm wrong, but you know, that's not something that's an issue and it's a, it's a, the different platforms have different problems. And so I think it's so interesting that it's not just like email.
[00:32:22] Grace Aldridge Foster: We have these problems with email or these things that frustrate us with email. It's like, it's highly platform specific too. And, um, yeah, yeah, yeah. Texting. Yeah, yeah. And, and having been at companies designing some of those tools, like Microsoft when Outlook was designed, for example, like there's a, an incredibly detailed and valiant attempt to address all of these things.
[00:32:52] Grace Aldridge Foster: Yeah. There are still decisions and assumptions and, and small hobgoblin of mine preferences [00:33:00] that just get baked in. Yeah. Is there a preference that says don't delete? Um, you know, meeting invites. Yeah, like maybe, but the two of us are talking, I have no frickin idea, you have no idea, right? And it is a big behavior shaping thing.
[00:33:17] Matthew Dunn: And then flip it around, if you were the guy designing Outlook, and you said, You know what, once they've seen the calendar, just make it go away. That's on at least one on one vector a really sensible decision. Why do I want to keep them? Right? I may have my own reasons, but it seems a little dumb said they did baldly, right?
[00:33:38] Matthew Dunn: You've seen it or the meetings passed. Why on earth would you Uh, maybe a good reason. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Maybe it's actually like a really thoughtful, you know, effort to help you sort of unclog your inbox and everything. But it's just interesting how often I hear people complain about that. And it's a good idea.
[00:33:59] Grace Aldridge Foster: [00:34:00] Yeah. Yeah. But I want to comment a little bit on you. You brought up the idea of preferences. And I think that, you know, we're talking about. You know, the sort of infrastructure of email. This is what you're talking about there. But when it comes to actually writing emails, this is something that is a constant, uh, negotiation, right?
[00:34:20] Grace Aldridge Foster: Like people write emails based on the way they prefer to write them. Based on their own preferences. But the thing about email is you're writing to accomplish something and it requires the participation of another person, of your recipient. And so constantly what I'm doing when I'm teaching is, is reminding people, you need to understand your audience's preferences and you need to write emails, uh, around their preferences, not yours.
[00:34:50] Grace Aldridge Foster: If you want to accomplish what it is that you, you set out to accomplish with your email. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. And you've got one of your, one of your mantras, I can't [00:35:00] remember the, the acronym you wrapped around it, but it's like sort of begin with the end in mind. bottom line up front. Is that it?
[00:35:08] Matthew Dunn: Bottom line up front? Well, bottom line up front, which I learned from my military clients. Yes. And what's really funny though, is, is they'll it's, it's very customary in the military to put literally B L U F. You know, like in bold at the top of your email and then a one sentence, you know, summary The problem is that one sentence summary is rarely actually the most important point in the email So I always joke like if your bluff isn't actually your bluff then like what are you know, what are you doing?
[00:35:38] Grace Aldridge Foster: um, so that's it's Sort of a funny thing that the military folks do, but yeah, so the bluff, put your bottom line up front and then the other acronym we use a lot is the art, the audience result and tone. How can you, you know, make sure that you, you know, what the result is that you're aiming for with a particular message before you send it, who you're sending it to, so who you need [00:36:00] that result from, and then what tone will move that particular audience.
[00:36:04] Grace Aldridge Foster: To that particular result. Uh, and that helps you fight against like, yeah, I'm gonna structure this the way I prefer it and helps you, you know, build empathy with your audience and think strategically, you know, and think, how can I do this the way they need, need it to be done. Wait. Yeah. Nice, nice. I like that.
[00:36:20] Matthew Dunn: And I see why you get re repeat, uh, repeat teaching engagements. Um, my observation would be that companies, organizations. overinvest in the technological means and underinvest in the fluency facility with those means. A zillion dollar email system and lots of people doing stupid things is not necessarily a great investment in communication.
[00:36:48] Matthew Dunn: And we keep doing it over and over. Yeah. Do you know, email is just this massive, um, gap in training. People don't, People just, employers [00:37:00] just assume, they just assume that their workforce knows how to do it. But why? No one has ever, no one ever is taught formally how to write email. You don't learn in high school.
[00:37:11] Grace Aldridge Foster: You don't learn in college. Um, and, and so you're, I think you're spot on like companies invest in platforms, they invest in technology, but then they just assume that it's something that their employees know how to do. Yeah. Why would they know? Why would they? Why would they know? Yeah. Why would they know?
[00:37:28] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Thanks for saying it. Why would they know? Um, and, and the actual, I'm sure measurable cost of not doing that is gotta be ginormous. That's aside from mistakes made just time sucked up thought wasted sheer exhaustion. Yes, and money. I mean, money. So yeah, I mean, imagine if every company just took it during their onboarding process.
[00:37:57] Grace Aldridge Foster: Just took a little while, one module, [00:38:00] one meeting, whatever it looks like, and just said, here is how, here are a set of best practices around emailing using our platform and sort of in, in, in this industry or company. Yeah, it would, it would be massive time savings, money savings, you know? Yeah, no, absolutely.
[00:38:18] Matthew Dunn: Or here's a, here's a new line of business for you. So, you know, bring someone in as the, as the, as the free floating coach slash, you know, critic. If you realize that, you know, Joe and accounting is a complete flipping disaster in everyone's inbox, you pull them aside and say, Joe, we just need to help you understand how to use this channel effectively.
[00:38:38] Matthew Dunn: It's actually going to pay off handsomely for you and the entire company. And please stop doing reply all whack. Yeah, just think, yeah, that seems so simple. I couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. Well. Uh, here's a, here's a, I'm [00:39:00] probably guilty of having told this story before, but I read a wonderful book, The History of the Pencil by Henry Petrosky.
[00:39:04] Matthew Dunn: I know, why would you read that book? It was interesting. Um, and he opens the book, I can't take credit for the, for the anecdote, he opens the book with an observation about Thoreau. I'm going to go off and live in Walden Pond and live a simple life. And he started by listing off the stuff he was going to take to the pond to live this simple life.
[00:39:25] Matthew Dunn: What's the one thing not on that list? The pencil he wrote it with. And the real punchline is, the Rose family was in the business of manufacturing pencils. Oh my gosh. And the point is, as successful technology becomes invisible, And of course, everyone knows how to write email. Perfectly good example of that.
[00:39:49] Matthew Dunn: No, they don't. Not write, write's part of it, but write and use. Yes. It's not quite the same thing. Not, not at all the same thing. [00:40:00] Um, you mind picking, picking on texting or sorry, discussing texting and instant messaging a little bit? What, what do you think? Sure. Where do you start? I mean. You know, I personally do text constantly with my, like my business partner, for example, or, you know, our, our, um, we all do our assistant, right?
[00:40:20] Grace Aldridge Foster: Like it's, it's just the most efficient means of quick, um, bite size, you know, communication throughout the day. So I certainly do that. Constantly myself and you know, I, I think, um, the, and I'm a, I think it makes a lot of sense just, just in terms of, of, of the way that works. Of course, there's a risk there, right?
[00:40:43] Grace Aldridge Foster: If you're using your personal phone and you're texting constantly for work and it's, it can feel like you're always working. It can feel like you're never disconnected. I mean, boundaries can get blurred. Absolutely. But, um, you know, I think that. That's something I use [00:41:00] constantly. All of my clients, in one form or another, use, uh, military and signal.
[00:41:05] Grace Aldridge Foster: You know, all my clients have, you know, are, are talking to each, all my military clients are talking to each other on signal. Um, and, but, but you can get away with a lot in text, right? You can be, You don't have to be grammatically correct. You don't have to, you know, your, your messages aren't going to get forwarded to someone else.
[00:41:26] Grace Aldridge Foster: So there, even though there is a record, you can take screenshots. It feels a little more ephemeral than, you know, than, than email. Um, so you can be a little less, uh, guarded. I think you can, uh, you worry. I think people are less inhibited when they're using, when they're using text, which is good. And sometimes Bad, you know, um, in a professional context, right?
[00:41:52] Grace Aldridge Foster: Like, um, but what are your thoughts about it?[00:42:00]
[00:42:02] Matthew Dunn: You even said it in, in, in just the examples you gave, um, because of the, uh, incredibly, uh, tight constraints of the channel, it's most effective. And I think most often used where there's shared relationship, shared context, shared knowledge, a bunch of that. Like my back and forth texting thread with my best friend is novel length, at least I'm sure.
[00:42:32] Matthew Dunn: And no one else would probably make any sense of it. Because we've got 50 years of history, right, that goes back and forth in, in, in the conversation. And it, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have done that in email. What a pain in the ass. That would have been right. Oh God, I need an entirely separate inbox. Yeah. Um, but it, but it works well.
[00:42:51] Matthew Dunn: It feels different. It is different. Um, it certainly changed writing though, which is something that intrigues me, right? The easy thing [00:43:00] to pick on would be, uh, acronyms and shorthand that have, have, they seem to have started in messaging platforms and sort of become part of speech and vernacular. Um, and it kind of makes sense because LOL is a lot easier to type.
[00:43:18] Matthew Dunn: Then the entire phrase it stands for. And now it's part of the, now it's part of the culture. You can see, you see texting phrases in, in email, but it's a largely. like the evolution of language always is, unexamined, accidental, goofy, cultural set of artifacts, not anything done intentionally. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I, I think that's also, um, so spot on.
[00:43:48] Grace Aldridge Foster: And as you were talking, I kept thinking about emoji also. I, I, uh, and also how, and like you said, with you, you know, when you text with your best friend, I, I feel that, uh, texting [00:44:00] conversations, The, they, uh, they adapt to an ongoing ones. They adapt a lot to your relationship with that person. Um, the type of language you use, the, um, cadence, the frequency is all highly attuned to your relationship with a person, whereas email, I think is a little bit more, um, like the, the way we use it as a little more rigid.
[00:44:25] Grace Aldridge Foster: It's, it's, there's like a slightly more, um, Static, you know, kind of a set of conventions around email. Yeah. Um, but like, I, I just keep thinking about emoji because it's almost impossible for me to imagine texting without them at this point. And which I think is generational to some extent. I don't think that everyone would say that.
[00:44:47] Grace Aldridge Foster: Um, but also. The way, like I use different emoji in different ways with different people, because you sort of develop this sort of like shorthand, you know, what that, you know, that particular emoji means [00:45:00] for the two of you, but I wouldn't necessarily use it with someone else. And the, and the applicability point here is, is tone.
[00:45:08] Grace Aldridge Foster: I think that people struggle to communicate. In tone when they're in email when they're very accustomed to texting because you have a range of Uh, things available to you in testing to convey your, your tone that aren't necessarily appropriate in email. Quick side thought, I don't want to lose this thread.
[00:45:32] Matthew Dunn: Just as companies would probably net out handsomely by investing in how to use email training, I suspect how to use Slack training probably would cancel out handsomely as well. Again, Slack and texting are not the same thing. But they share some attributes. Yeah, well, Slack is like if email and texting had a baby.
[00:45:56] Grace Aldridge Foster: I think. A bit. Email, texting, and Google had a baby. I think. [00:46:00] I, I, I, I. I don't deliberately do not have much slackness in my day to day because I find it bloody annoying for part. Um, but I don't think slack is an organizational tool works very well without a big search engine parked on top of it. You know, you think reverse threaded email.
[00:46:21] Matthew Dunn: Is a disaster. Try the reverse thread of a converse of a slack conversation without search to get to the point that you, if you happen to know the term to get to the point that's there somewhere. Yeah, like, yeah, kind of a mess. The, uh, the emoji evolution of emojis kind of intriguing because I'm a big visual communication geek.
[00:46:43] Matthew Dunn: So watch this fairly carefully, right? The, uh, Unicode character set with visuals showed up later. Texting was, in SMS especially, was ASCII text only at first, and the Unicode emoji set was really [00:47:00] pretty slim initially. But people, and I think it happened, I think it happened with the younger users first.
[00:47:09] Matthew Dunn: The, emotional and tone shorthand of the right visual. It's extraordinary how effective it is. And the, the various committees involved in Unicode sort of got pushed by the world, expand this, add to this. No, not everyone is pink. So think about that, like keep, and the scope of emojis getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
[00:47:35] Matthew Dunn: And there's some really eloquent, witty. Funny stuff that people do with emoji. I like, I salute. That's really cool. Yeah. It's this whole sub language. Yeah, absolutely. And it's also just this massive cultural touch point, which I find fascinating. And you know, I'm, I have a much younger sister. She's 12 years younger than me.[00:48:00]
[00:48:00] Grace Aldridge Foster: Okay. And, uh, so I'm millennial, thoroughly, you know, thoroughly millennial. She is thoroughly Gen Z and like, she constantly roasts me for the way I use emoji, you know, emojis like the laugh cry emoji, which is apparently just like, you know, so millennial of me and, you know, she'll, yes, yes. And, uh, so she'll, I think that's fascinating.
[00:48:25] Grace Aldridge Foster: I mean, there, there's a decade between us basically and the way. I and my friends and my contemporaries sort of using emojis is different from the way she and her contemporaries are using emoji. And I think that that's fascinating how nuanced it is and yet how deeply encoded and universal it is as well.
[00:48:44] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, super encoded. But personal story, my dad no longer with us, unfortunately, you know, the little purple sort of demony looking on an iPhone. He used that. We never knew why. And he used that. And so now with my sisters and [00:49:00] mom and myself, that little emoji. Is, is a dad reference, like, and all that stuff got baked into that little, little character right there.
[00:49:11] Matthew Dunn: So, wow, that tenure gap and, do you have any sense of what you do that's the, you know, the faux pas for a Gen Z with, with emojis? Well, one of them is the laugh cry emoji, apparently. You're not supposed to use it? It's like, it's just very basic of you. It's sort of like old and, and whatever. And so she, and I'm sure it's already changed by now, because that's the other thing is I feel like the sort of Gen Z usage is like constantly adapting, whereas maybe millennial usage is like a little more rigid, which I think is part of what she's like roasting me about is that it's like very predictable and sort of stodgy or something.
[00:49:51] Grace Aldridge Foster: So like, you know, several years ago, Uh, she sent me this tweet or something explaining how, uh, you know, Gen Z's use like the, the [00:50:00] skull emoji instead of the laugh cry emoji, you know, and again, this is all, if she ever listens to this, she's going to like cringe because I'm sure I'm explaining this all wrong at this point.
[00:50:11] Grace Aldridge Foster: But, and you know, it never would have occurred to me at that point in time to use a skull to show that I was like laughing really hard, you know, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's It's I'm dead, you know, like that's so funny. Yeah, I'm dead, you know, well, but, but, but look at the, I mean, this is interesting. Just like we can put our academic hats on for a second.
[00:50:30] Matthew Dunn: It, it, it's interesting, the sort of deeper reference chain that, that, that younger generation has going there, right. That, that gets encoded and represented. It's not just in the, in the emoji, it's the choice of the emoji in the particular conversation with the particular people. And, you know, when you're in your teens, you have time to keep up with memes.
[00:50:58] Matthew Dunn: And you get out of me [00:51:00] like, I stopped giving a crap at some point. I do not have a time or interest or whatever. It's just not efficient for my life to try to be that hip. Do I know who that musical act is? No, I'm perfectly fine with that. Right. Um, and, and someone will make, someone will have, someone make fun of her for fill in the blanks, you know, encoding at some point in the future.
[00:51:21] Matthew Dunn: Like that, that's kind of natural. Um, but it's pretty fascinating. Like, I don't know if we'll be able to. Pause and study this as scholars should at some point in the future, but it'd be pretty darn interesting to do it. Oh, it would be. I'm sure someone is doing it. I should, I should look into this a little bit more, but, um, yeah, it, I think it's all really fascinating.
[00:51:45] Grace Aldridge Foster: And then you think about the implications, like the way that, you know, emojis are constantly changing and evolving. They're so nuanced. And then Grammarly, for instance, their tone detector uses emojis to, um, [00:52:00] describe the tone that you're using in an email or in something that you've written. So then what happens, so then what happens when those emojis actually, like, they're not stable, you know, they, they're, they're constantly, uh, changing and, and, and evolving.
[00:52:14] Grace Aldridge Foster: And, and so I think that that's interesting too. It's like the system where we're using emoji emojis to gauge or to reflect to analyze something. But then what happens when that system itself is sort of constantly in flux and highly constant audience dependent? Yeah. Yeah. That, uh, well, well put. And, and interesting.
[00:52:35] Matthew Dunn: There's the standard, I think Unicode emoji set in Slack, or do they have additional, I can't remember if they've got additional. Oh, I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah. Characters are not, I'm, I would bet you'd find within companies, or slack communities, I would bet you'd find some of the same kind of evolution of encoding pattern.
[00:52:56] Matthew Dunn: Um, and, and you find it, you know, frankly, it's what's happening with those [00:53:00] visual characters is the same thing that happens with words and terms and language. It's just a little more starkly visible because it's, you know, it's one, whatever bit character that drops in there. You're like, wrong character.
[00:53:15] Matthew Dunn: You are so old. Right. It's like this one character just so much, so much, so much freight. Well, and, and, you know, a true, true wit doesn't require a lot of words, right? Just the right You know, kind of thing like, oh, that guy's really smart. He said just the right thing. Yeah. Interesting. I suspect we could probably do this for hours because I've completely lost track of time, but I don't want to lose track of your time.
[00:53:46] Matthew Dunn: Um, where do you see yourself, you know, taking, taking the business and the things you do? Well, it's a great question. You know, something that we're, we're a service based business, but something that we've [00:54:00] been working on is, is we focus a lot on training experiences because I think especially around writing.
[00:54:07] Grace Aldridge Foster: Well, people don't want that. To do writing training. People want to hire us, right? Employers want us to come in and do writing training. Employees are not excited about it. Um, so we work really hard to make, like, our, our training experiences extremely engaging. So one thing that we've been trying to do as we grow the company is create, um, You know, self paced training options so that we can, we can scale, we can reach more people, uh, but figuring out how to, uh, preserve a really fun, engaging experience when you're training on a topic that no one really wants to learn about is, is sort of a, one of our, um, interesting challenges right now and something to work on.
[00:54:51] Matthew Dunn: You did a shift from DC to North Carolina, you said at the beginning, is that because enough stuff can be done virtually and [00:55:00] then other stuff with travel that your own location doesn't really have to be tied to the business? Exactly. I mean, most of our, you know, in person training is still East Coast. We have some clients, you know, and other, we travel sometimes around the country, but mostly it's East Coast.
[00:55:15] Grace Aldridge Foster: And so it's an easy flight if I need to be in person, but most of our training is still virtual, you know, went a hundred percent virtual during COVID. And, um, You know, people are returning to in person training, but it's certainly not back to the same, uh, you know, kind of percentage it was before the pandemic.
[00:55:32] Grace Aldridge Foster: So yeah, I can kind of live anywhere. My, my business partner lives in Miami beach. I live in Raleigh, members in Pittsburgh and Nashville and, you know, kind of spread, spread around and that's great. That's awesome. Well, Grace, if someone says, Oh man, do we need her help? Where do they go to find you? They should go to boldtype.
[00:55:53] Grace Aldridge Foster: us. That's our website, and it's very easy to get in touch with us from there. But I'd also love to connect with [00:56:00] people on LinkedIn. It's Grace Aldridge Foster, and it'll be great to hear from folks. Well, Grace Aldridge Foster, it has been a true delight talking with you. Thanks so much for making the time.
[00:56:10] Grace Aldridge Foster: Thank you, Matthew. It's a pleasure. We're out.
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