Nextalk

For the most part, I am a supporter of the efforts of NECA and the FCC to clean-up the VRS industry. Unfortunately, the prospect of reaping $6.64 per minute was just too much for some to resist – especially since it was coming from a faceless government regulated fund, which enabled some people to think that what they were doing was a victimless crime. But if the allegations of fraud in recent FBI criminal complaints are true (they can be downloaded at http://www.edsalert.com/2009/07/08/fbi-warrants-and-warning/), then it’s absolutely appropriate for NECA and the FCC to begin watching the industry more closely.

But sometimes good people who are trying to do the right thing can get a little too zealous. That’s a phenomenon that we always need to remain vigilant for because when it happens, it’s the innocent who tend to get hurt. And recent FCC rulings concerning conference calls have me wondering if that’s exactly what is about to happen.

The conference call probably ranks right up there with the word processor when it comes to workplace tools that are essential for career and professional success. The word on the street is that many VRS calls that go into teleconference bridge numbers are being red-flagged now as potential fraud, with payment being delayed or withheld indefinitely – often because these conference calls tend to be longer in duration than the “average” call.

When VRS providers know that they will have a difficult time getting paid when calls are made into teleconference bridges, it would be naive to think that their interest in placing those calls and the quality of service won’t be affected in some way. At NexTalk, we have an executive team conference call every Monday morning with our Vice President of Business Development joining the conference call by VRS. The last thing she needs is a VRS provider that would rather have its VI doing just about anything else other than servicing our call. To the contrary, we all need the very best interpreters the provider has and we need them for as long as they can hang in there. Yes, these calls are lengthy, and by their nature they also usually involve relatively complex language and multiple voices. Rather than being penalized for serving these kinds of calls, there is argument that says VRS providers should receive even higher compensation than for other types of calls because business conference calls are so demanding. The level of skill required is something that not every VI possesses…

I particularly worry that recent FCC rulings make it difficult or impossible for VRS providers to interpret conference calls where all of the participants are deaf and are on the call via VRS. Problem number 1 is how a VI provider is supposed to know whether participants are deaf or hearing. Deputizing interpreters and asking them to start policing conference calls is bad policy. In many cases, it would require VI’s actually interrupting telephonic business meetings to question participants about whether they’re deaf or hearing. That doesn’t sound much like functional equivalence.

As vexing as that is, problem number 2 is even worse. At this time, if a group of deaf colleagues in remote locations need to conduct a business meeting remotely, there simply is no other effective way to do it than by conference calls where all participants are there via VRS. At NexTalk, we have a business division run entirely by deaf employees, and they rely significantly on feedback from teams of deaf “beta” users of our software. The inability for them to conduct these kinds of calls will have a significant negative impact on our business. Do we now have to plant a hearing user on every beta team call for the sole purpose getting VI’s to do the calls? The FCC’s current position banning these types of calls effectively ensures that teams of deaf co-workers in different locations cannot be as effective as hearing teams can be because they cannot conduct conference calls. In an environment where too many organizations already worry about whether and how deaf employees can be effective, now we have a federal agency essentially decreeing that they cannot be. Something is very wrong with this picture.

My company, NexTalk, is not a relay company, so these policies have little direct effect on our revenues. But they do affect our business, and they significantly impact our deaf employees. While I understand why FCC and NECA are tightening up their policies, I can’t help but wonder if they’re throwing the baby out with the VRS bath-water.

Todd D. Wakefield is CEO of NexTalk, Inc. ( http://www.nextalk.com ). He lives in Park City, Utah with his wife of 20 years and four kids.

This post may be a bit tardy, but since I haven’t seen enough other people do it, I’m going to take this opportunity give kudos and thanks to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at RIT for its annual job fair held October 14, 2009. It was a first-class event; well organized and executed. I particularly appreciated the hospitality of John Macko, the Director of NTID’s Center on Employment. Notwithstanding all of the work he and his staff were engaged in to ensure the fair was a success, John still found a way to be a most hospitable host.

It was, of course, great to see the numerous federal and state government agencies represented at the fair. But what was particularly impressive to me was the number of private sector employers who participated. It was fun to see big names like Bank of New York Mellon, Eli Lilly & Co., IBM, ITT, Microsoft and Raytheon competing for talent even in a tough economy.

But it quickly became clear to me why they were there when I interviewed two outstanding candidates for potential positions at NexTalk. I was impressed with background and credentials of both of these students, as well as their people skills. It was treat getting acquainted with. Clearly NTID has an eye for talent. In fact, it may be too good at that for its own good, as shown by its loss of AlanaHurwitz to Gallaudet, which just hired him as its 10th president. But fear not. There are plenty of other equally impressive people at NTID, so look forward to more good things to come!

And for the rest of us, I’d suggest looking at the list of companies supporting great employment opportunities for these students and supporting them with our business. You can find the list by pasting this address into your browser – http://www.ntid.rit.edu/NCE/jobfair_students.php.

Todd D. Wakefield is CEO of NexTalk, Inc. ( http://www.nextalk.com ). He lives in Park City, Utah with his wife of 20 years and four kids.

In my previous post, I tried to make the case for how important it is that there be passion for the organization shared among the members of a workplace team. I promised that this time I would try to offer some specific things I’ve found that can can help stoke that that passion. My personal favorite is this: pick a fight!

OK, maybe not an outright fight, but at least get your colleagues to disagree with you. Get them to do it vocally, with feeling. And get them to do it on matters that are important, that you feel strongly about. Get them to argue with you. Really. And it’s not about raised voices, but strong opinions. Get them to debate even though many of them will at first be terribly hesitant and uncomfortable trying to do. Help them grow into it.

Debate is a remarkable tool in a work environment. Done respectfully, it fosters respect among co-workers. Done regularly with wide participation, it cultivates engagement. Done with broad participation, around the truly important issues, it encourages ownership, commitment and loyalty. And when you have a team where the members are engaged, loyal, committed, and feel a sense of ownership, you have the key ingredients of passion. Unless the group simply has terrible chemistry or there is severe dysfunction elsewhere, passion should be ready to emerge and grow.

But debate is hard enough without a language barrier. How do you ensure that it extends to and includes deaf and hard-of-hearing colleagues? It’s not easy. But there are things you can do.

Be vocal and up-front about wanting that debate to occur. There may be situations where there’s an advantage to quietly, invisibly and slowly cultivating a culture of healthy debate. This is not one of them. Come right out and say it – clearly, broadly and repeatedly. A workplace with language and communication gaps is no place to be subtle. Tell all of your colleagues you want them to argue with you, but tell deaf workers they can and should be more firm about it than anyone else. Tell everyone (who has a sense of humor) that if worse comes to worse and something gets a little too firm or harsh sounding, they should blame it on the interpreter! Anything to get deaf colleagues to insert and assert themselves in the debate.

Also, don’t just tell your team what you’re trying to encourage, but ask them to hold each other and you accountable. And, by all means, reward them for doing it – in front of everyone. If every team member feels like he/she is expected, and empowered, to hunt down and eliminate debate-squelching behaviors, you’re halfway home.

If, as a leader, you need to cut off a debate for some reason, or you need to make a decision that goes against the direction the debate pointed, tell everyone that’s what you’re doing. And as best you can, tell them why. And when you do so, make absolutely certain you have a direct conversation with your deaf and hard-of-hearing colleagues about the fact you’ve done it and why.

This may be obvious, but sometimes the obvious is worth restating: if someone on your team is struggling with getting into a debating mindset (deaf or hearing), talk with them about offline and get their permission to actively draw them in when a debate is or should be happening. Then go ahead and start interrupting your debates to seek their thoughts, questions, concerns, etc. Ask them open ended questions. Don’t wait for what feels a natural place in the discussion to do it. As soon as it occurs to you that someone may be having a hard time, you’re probably right. So stop and ask for their input.

There is, of course, more you can do, but this is starting to become too long of a post. So I’ll come back to the topic again in the future to flesh it out more. For now, just remember that workplace passion is the best insurance policy you can have against a tough and unpredictable environment. And that passion is something you can cultivate in your organization. One of the best ways to start is get your co-workers in on the dialog of your organization. Get them into the conversation – into the debate – not as “yes-men,” but rather as “don’t-you-think-we-should-consider-this-too-men.” Make your workplace a place for healthy debate, and you’ll have a healthy – and more passionate – workplace.

Todd D. Wakefield is CEO of NexTalk, Inc. ( http://www.nextalk.com ). He lives in Park City, Utah with his wife of 20 years and four kids.

Every organization faces tough times. It’s not a matter of whether, but when you’ll run into turbulence. The interesting question is how will you navigate it.

Why is it that some organizations break under the strain of hard times while others navigate storms with grace and emerge stronger than before? I’m not cocky enough to pretend I know all of the reasons. But I have had the good fortune to be involved with organizations that successfully weathered some pretty severe storminess. Looking back at those experiences leads me to one inescapable conclusion: passion in the workplace matters when times get tough (that’s passion for the organization, not for the hot looking guy/gal you work with).

Passion burns away fear and pettiness. It inspires extraordinary effort, and somehow clears the way for creativity and resourcefulness to work their magic. A passionate team is powerful force. It doesn’t break up in rough waters, and when calm returns, a passionate team makes headway at a pace nobody can touch.

“That’s all good and fine,” you say. “Tell me something I don’t know, something I can use – like how to infuse a team with passion. And tell me how in the world this all relates to deafness and hearing loss in the workplace.” Tune in to my next and we’ll dig in to the nuts and bolts of organizational passion, one of the tools you can use to infuse your workplace with it, and some thoughts on how to use that tool.

Todd D. Wakefield is CEO of NexTalk, Inc. ( http://www.nextalk.com ). He lives in Park City, Utah with his wife of 20 years and four kids.

If you’re familiar with “The Cluetrain Manifesto,” you know that it was something of a seminal book for the new era of web-savvy business. You’ll also know that it was published 10 years ago, and that the fact I’m only now reading it must mean I’m one seriously un-hip business dude – at least in my business book reading habits.

Of course I have some excellent excuses. They’re the same ones I use to justify the mess that is the interior of my car. Their names are Whitney, Sierra, Harrison and Sophia. Yes, they’re wonderful kids, but they are kids – i.e., high maintenance. Those of you with a similar excuse understand that between the endless, soccer games, tennis matches, etc., I’m lucky to have time to tie my shoes (which is why I wear loafers) – much less keep up with the latest trendy business books. But “Cluetrain” has migrated from the trendy to the almost mainstream in the 10 years since it was published, so I couldn’t put it off any longer.

Although I haven’t yet finished it, I’m already comfortable giving it a solid thumbs-up. Even 10 years on, it’s pretty thought-provoking stuff. One of the thoughts it provoked for me is how one of the defining elements of the Web, the hyperlink, seems to have transcended the world of the Internet and come to typify how organizations and markets are structured (or rather, structure themselves) nowadays. For the non-nerds out there, a hyperlink is, according to Wikipedia, “a reference in a document to an external or internal piece of information. The most common usage is in the Internet to browse through web pages: some text in the current document is highlighted so that when clicked, the browser automatically displays another page or changes the current page to show the referenced content.”

OK, so it’s not the most non-nerdy description in the world, but it works, if for no other reason, because it’s peppered with hyperlinks (i.e., reference, Internet, web pages, document and browser). In other words, when something is hyperlinked, that just means it’s tied in with something else in a way you can very easily connect directly to that something else.

The “Cluetrain” authors talk about hyperlinks in a unique way, offering this interesting observation: “employees are getting hyperlinked.” So why does that matter to you and me? Because, as they also note, “Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.” Translation: today workplace conversations don’t just happen up and down the lines of the old pyramid-shaped org chart. They go up, down and sideways – and with email, sometimes every direction at once.

The implications are not trivial for those trying to build inclusive organizations, or for individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing trying to thrive in such organizations. Managers and co-workers need to understand that even in this brave new world of “hyperlinked” employees boldly conversing up and down lines of authority, throughout teams, and across departments and divisions – even now such communication is not yet natural for everyone. Which means it is still uncomfortable and difficult for some.

Deaf and hearing employees in particular can find themselves separated by more than just the levels of authority or department boundaries that inhibit everyone else. Their co-workers need to understand that, and work harder to recognize and encourage when those efforts are being made. They also need to work that much harder to remind themselves to do the same and actively “hyperlink” with deaf and hard-of-hearing colleagues. Similarly, deaf and hard-of-hearing employees need to help compensate for communication gaps by pushing harder to establish those linkages. They need to de-sensitize themselves to hurried, lukewarm, awkward or even resistant responses to their efforts.

It’s also important to remember that effective hyperlinking among colleagues in the workplace involves more than just communicating purely work-related information back and forth on an as-needed basis. The real connecting that makes hyperlinking happen at work also involves non work-related communication. It’s about relationships. Hearing and deaf employees both need to look for opportunities and mechanisms to help them overcome the lack of “water cooler” talk. Text or IM a good joke, touch someone on the shoulder and smile, email a deaf colleague down the hall about what your co-workers are talking about at the water cooler. And by all means, have lunch together and pass notes back and forth if you have to. Whatever you do, work on those connections, and do it continuously – force it if you have to. It will become more natural over time.

We all know there is tremendous value in a diverse and inclusive organization. What we sometimes forget in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of the office, when we’re running around just being “hyper,” is that it only takes a little focus and effort to make sure that our hyperlinks to co-workers are also inclusive. In most cases, and on both sides of the divide, the challenge is only partly the communication barriers themselves. It’s often simply the natural disinclination to do something new, and unfortunately truly inclusive organizations with hyperlinks that traverse disability, are still mostly new.

That natural hesitance is something we need to work together to overcome. We need to get comfortable with something new. After all, it’s new world in most of organizations now – a hyperlinked world. Don’t let your organization be so hyper that it never gets around to being fully hyperlinked.

Todd D. Wakefield is CEO of NexTalk, Inc. ( http://www.nextalk.com ). He lives in Park City, Utah with his wife of 20 years and four kids.

I have followed with interest the discussion surrounding the NAD’s request that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) take action to ensure VRS users the ability to use the full features of any videophone with any default VRS provider they may choose. The FCC previously had ordered VRS providers to make their videophones work with any VRS default provider, but required the devices to offer only “basic” functions – that is, the ability to make and receive calls. It didn’t require more advanced features call history and missed calls, video mail, ring alerts, etc.

The usual argument spurred by this debate is whether “de-featuring” a videophone is inappropriate because it’s anti-competitive, or whether it is instead an appropriate way to ensure recovery of R&D costs (which can be difficult to do when devices are given away). This is without doubt an important question, but it’s not the only issue that needs to be considered. There is a fundamental technical issue as well:

In order to provide features, certain pieces of hardware and software need to be leveraged. If all of that necessary hardware and software resides inside a videophone itself (or on the computer, in the case of a software VP), then from a technical perspective it should not be terribly difficult to offer such features regardless of which VRS provider with which one uses the VP to connect. On the other hand, certain features may depend on hardware or software that resides not in the device, but in a data center far away. In those cases, it may be very difficult – or even impossible – for all features to be enabled when the device is connecting with another VRS provider whose hardware and software infrastructure may be unable to support the feature (or at least unable to support the feature as implemented in somebody else’s design).

An example would be the “walkie talkie” feature on a Sprint-Nextel mobile phone. While the phone itself might be able to be reprogrammed to work on the Verizon Wireless network, the walkie talkie feature simply cannot be made to work on anyone else’s network because it depends on certain hardware and software infrastructure that resides entirely (and only) in Sprint-Nextel’s data centers and on its network.

Eventually technology seems always to adapt to new regulatory standards and environments. The same is probably true here. But, regulations typically are much easier to write than to implement, and they often have unintended consequences. Could it be the case that some of the most advanced videophone features might simply need to be abandoned by all providers because they cannot feasibly be made to work across disparate hardware and software systems? I don’t know. But I’d sure like to see a little more discussion about that, and perhaps a little less about the anti-competitive vs. R&D expense recovery argument – where nobody on one side is likely to convince anyone on the other side anyway. For more commentary, check out http://www.nextalk.com