Institute For The Future

The Blackberry UI defense

I noticed in this morning's Talking Points Memo a twist in the "he said, she said" swirling around the U.S. Attorney firings / resignations/ replacements. One of the elements of the controversy involves the use of a little-known provision allowing the Attorney General to appoint interim attorneys without Congressional approval, and whether the firings were intended as a test of that new power.

 

Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson was advising the use of the AG's newfound power to appoint replacements indefinitely -- without the trouble of Senate confirmation.... The emails show that Sampson wasn't shy about the scheme. He discussed it freely with members of the White House counsel office, including Harriet Miers. In October of 2006, he forwarded one of these discussions to Michael Elston, [Deputy Attorney General Paul] McNulty's chief of staff.

 

McNulty has maintained that he knew nothing about this, and that the AG's office always planned to send the nominations up to Capitol Hill.

But if his chief of staff was sent an e-mail about it, how could McNulty not have heard? The culprit is technology:

 

“Either Elston did not scroll down on his BlackBerry to read the last section [of the e-mail] or it made no impression on him, because he knew that it did not reflect the department’s plan for replacing the U.S. attorneys who would be asked to resign,” says spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.

 

This instantly reminded me of a problem John Hagel wrote about, "Berrybite" blowback:

 

Both JSB and I have had experiences where documents we sent were read by people on a Blackberry or Treo. They weren’t long documents – basically the equivalent of two or three pages of text. The recipients were initially highly critical of the material. But, when we pressed them to read the documents again, they came back after reading them more carefully on a PC or in print form and apologized for their initial reactions. They said the material was excellent and they didn’t really understand why they had such a negative initial reaction.

Well, we think we know why initial reactions were so negative. The Blackberry or Treo is not conducive to a careful read – it encourages skimming. It also encourages people to find a quick way to capture what is in the document and then move on to the next message. As a result, people tend to try to fit these documents into familiar categories based on some key words rather than thinking deeply about the topic and absorbing new perspectives. It also doesn’t help that documents on these devices are typically accessed in environments with lots of distractions – meeting rooms, airports, automobiles, etc. – making it difficult to concentrate on the message at hand.

Bottom line, if you send a document to someone and they don’t like it, ask them how they accessed and read it. If it was on a Blackberry or Treo, ask them to read it again in a different format. You (and they) might be surprised at how their reactions change.

 

One has to wonder how many government or corporate decisions are made via Blackberry or Treo without having read all through the relevant documents.... John or JSB, if you're someday called as defense witnesses, I deeply apologize!