Improving Effective Workplace Communication
Taking the time and energy to develop effective communication skills is definitely a rewarding experience if undertaken with full dedication. The benefits of improving your communication skills will be found both at home and in the workplace. A great key to successful and rewarding employment is developing effective communication in the workplace. It helps you get the job, helps you keep the job, and most importantly helps you enjoy the job. Good workplace communication is the difference between awkward water cooler conversations and going out for drinks after work with a new friend, between those people you avoid running into in the halls and someone you have a new story to tell. Great workplace communication means never having to be told something twice, never having to repeat yourself, breezing through that interaction with those troublesome clientele or customers. using Effective communication skills in your workplace may begin you on a path to a better position, better pay, better understanding of co-workers, more contentment in your current work, and it all may begin with a single, simple step.
Improving communication skills is simple, but requires both effort and time. To start with, simply make more eye contact, use good posture, and ask questions. These things can be done right away and can markedly improve your communication. The hallmarks of great communication are much more in depth, and may take practice, studying, or heightened self-awareness to enact. Do not despair, there is hope. Improving communication skills is a gradual process, but one which quickly reaps rewards; other people will notice right away and begin to more positively respond to your improved demeanor and your relationships will thank you. Another positive aspect to developing effective communication skills is the countless situations and opportunities that you will be granted on a daily basis, not only will all of your normal interactions become chances to practice new techniques and learn more, but your improved communication skills will create better relationships that will foster longer interactions that offer more opportunity to practice. It is like a snowball rolling down hill; it picks up mass and speed as it goes, ever growing. Think about it, who are you most likely to look forward to bumping into, working with, or even spending time with after work: the open, and friendly person who listens when you talk, and looks you in the eye; or the person who won’t look at you, mumbles to themselves under their breath, and never takes the time to let you finish a sentence?
Workplace communication makes your job much easier, and sometimes even enjoyable. It is said that there is ‘one of those people’ at every job, but what if there didn’t have to be? You have the power to change anyone into a more competent, enjoyable and helpful co-worker; all that is required of you to re-shape your co-workers is communication skills. Effective communication in the workplace also has considerable benefits for the organization as they see an increased in productivity and efficiency. Taking the time to develop effective communication skills may not be like switching on a light, but it is like rolling a log downhill, once you are started it is not easy to stop, and why would you want to?
Satellite Radio – The XM-Sirius Merger
As most of you probably know Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio formerly merged on July 29th, 2008. If you are like most people, your first reaction was “WHAT?”
The knee-jerk reaction was that this created a monopoly, the very thing the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is supposed to guard against, and how the heck did this happen? Many of you probably remember the Bell Telephone monopoly and how in 1984 it was forced to split. This resulted in AT&T and seven smaller regional companies called the “Baby Bells”. It did not hurt the industry and in fact, resulted in competition that has contributed to keeping telephone costs down. It’s a whole new ballgame today though.
As far as Sirius and XM go, though it was called a merger, it was technically a takeover or acquisition of XM by Sirius. In 1997 (was it really that long ago?…how time flies!) the FCC granted two licenses for satellite radio networks in the U.S. and stipulated at the time that one of the holders of the licenses would not be allowed to gain control of the other. This merger then was very controversial and it was surprising, to say the least, that the FCC would allow this to happen.
Well, it didn’t actually happen overnight. The official announcement of the merger took place on February 19, 2007. Just one month later they filed a “Consolidated Application for Authority to Transfer Control” at the FCC. On March 24th, 2008, more than a year later, the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division closed its investigation of the two companies and cited that there would be no harm to consumers or to competition. On July 25th, 2008, the FCC approved the merger in a 3 to 2 vote, though even this vote was questionable as it was purely along party lines (though when there are only 5 people voting….). Sirius XM Satellite Radio came into being just four days later, in the U.S. XM Canada and Sirius Canada are still operating as wholly separate companies.
There were, of course, two schools of thought on the subject.
The benefits of the merger were expected to be:
- Since both companies will now operate as one entity, the cost of licensing the material to be broadcast should be reduced. Obviously, less staff will be required to run the newly merged company and programming will be able to be spread across the combined satellite constellations of both companies.
- The variety of programming is expected to increase. For instance, if all the duplicate channels are done away with, that leaves more programming space available for which new contracts can be written. The subscribers from both services would benefit, though since the merger there have been claims by some that the programming has suffered.
- As one company, more money can be spent in order to develop new products. For example, both XM and Sirius now carry satellite weather and traffic, undreamed of at the time that satellite radio was first launched. It is fully expected that new technologies will lead to new product development and that the freeing up of funds by the merger will enable this to happen more quickly.
- As one company, bankruptcy was averted by both. When attempting to get approval for the merger, the companies argued that bankruptcy by both would result in less competition for land-based radio stations and for streaming services like Pandora.
The cons of the merger were expected to be:
- That as a monopoly, so to speak, the company could raise subscription rates. That happened in March 2009, as rate hikes were announced, but the Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin has offered to fix prices so as to satisfy regulators and the consumers.
- That new development would be hampered. Opponents argued that XM’s competition with Sirius is what prodded both companies to develop new products, such as smaller receivers with many more features.
- By far the largest argument went to the consolidation of these two companies resulting in a monopoly. In essence yes, but it was argued that there was actually more competition outside of these two companies, as there were competitors streaming audio content to portable devices, such as cell phones. ClearChannel Communications offers an application that allows access to all of their radio stations, which includes the same type of content available on satellite radio. Both the iPhone and Blackberry, and now others, are capable of receiving streamed music. Pandora and Slacker are two other competitors that offer online listening, but do not offer live DKs, news or talk radio.
So, what has been the real result so far? Well, both companies used huge star power to lure consumers to their particular company. Now the consumer can have the best of both Sirius and XM when it comes to Oprah, Howard Stern, Bob Dylan and others. The same holds true for sports. The NFL and NASCAR were on Sirius and MLB, NHL, PGA and Indy Racing were on XM. There has been some confusion as far as programming changes, but not enough for people to drop their subscriptions en masse. Evidently the prior Sirius subscribers want the BEAT returned and prior XM subscribers want BPM back.
There’s no doubt that there will be further changes. This new company is, in effect, still in its infancy regardless of the combined experience. There will be bugs to work out and a new way of doing business, but you can be sure that Sirius XM Satellite Radio is betting on success.
The Health of Ham Radio Today
The Amateur Radio Service has an almost unduplicated position for a recreational activity/leisure time pursuit because of its historically tight coupling to the wireless telecommunications, broadcasting, and military communications industries. Few other hobbies have supplied such a sizable number of both motivated and trained workers and of useful technological improvements to their associated commercial industries.
There was once a time in the industry when it would have been routinely assumed that an applicant for a technical job was a licensed Amateur and had a station on-air. No longer is that true, of course. But, whether or not most people in the industry explicitly recognize it, the health and survival of the Amateur service is still very important for the industry – if for no other reason, because Amateur radio is one of the few remaining services where an individual can still develop practical, hands-on, trial-and-error RF experience on his own! And since such practical RF experience is becoming scarce in today’s raging digital flood, that’s not a small concern.
In the Curmudgeon’s view the health of the Amateur Service today is only average. Not robust but just “so-so,” a kind of flabby middle-age. And that is ironic, for the level of RF technology available to the Service has improved tremendously in the fifty years since the Curmudgeon earned his first license. But during these decades the sociology associated with the Service has degraded considerably. That degradation extends to licensees’ on-air behavior, to their motivation and interest to learn and to experiment, and to their willingness just to “lend a hand” to benefit others, whether in helping new initiates to qualify for licenses or in public service activities.
Today’s Amateur Service is not your grandfather’s hamming. “Yep, Bubb, it really was more fun back then!” Too many of today’s active hams are too disinclined to pick up a soldering iron, too egocentric in their on-air operating practices, too focused on artificially-produced competitiveness when cooperation would work equally as well. The character of the Service has degraded over the decades, perhaps tracking that of the larger American culture, and the obvious question is “Why?”
The Curmudgeon ascribes the sociology problem to two causes, one natural and one man-made. The natural cause is the aging-out of the senior ham population and with that the demise of some semblance of historical understanding, experience, and quality in the ranks. That of course is unstoppable. The man-made cause is something that the Curmudgeon now has to admit that he erred in initially favoring. That was the restructuring of the FCC license exam process as manifested by the establishment a few years ago of the “No Code” Amateur Radio licenses (i.e., no requirement to demonstrate ability to send/receive the International Morse Code, plus other unrelated changes).
Prior to the advent of restructuring, earning an Amateur license probably required more than the amount of work and dedication that would have been proportional to the reward, and thus the arduous licensing requirements overly restricted the entrance of new participants. Now the qualifications for the restructured Amateur licenses are probably set too low, and this has resulted in the influx of telecommunications consumers and casual hobbyists in quantities that threaten to seriously change the nature of the Service.
To be fair, the elimination of the code proficiency requirement itself was inevitable; it was a change that occurred in the same time period when Morse Code was also being dropped as an authorized emissions mode for other (commercial) radio services. By itself “No Code” is probably not sufficient to account for all the degradation. Rather, the Curmudgeon believes that the open publication of the license exam question pool, with its “just cram for the exam” ethic, and the concurrent rise of commercial “Amateur exam quick study courses” of various kinds has created much of the damage.
Just consider the advertisements for the nascent “FCC Amateur exam preparation industry.” In one case an entrepreneur advertises that an individual can go from zero telecommunications knowledge to passing the (entry level) Technician Class exam in a one-weekend “camp!” In another case an individual possessing the entrance grade license reported that he successfully passed the (highest level) Extra Class exam after just twelve hours of study using an on-line (for profit) Web site. There are testimonials also from individuals who claimed to have passed all three current levels of license exams from scratch in the course of only two months, using the various exam preparation services! These rapid time scales and minimal work loads were unknown in the Service prior to restructuring.
But perhaps the most telling example of the lowered level of the current exams involves an English ham…a chap who is a graduate engineer and a long-time holder of the highest level UK ham license. Recently he attended a UK national ham convention where he unexpectedly discovered that the US Amateur license exams were being given. With no preparatory studying whatsoever, never having ever read the FCC’s Part 97 Rules, and acting strictly on impulse, he instantly decided to take the US exams. Ninety minutes later he departed with a new US Amateur Extra Class license! A “special case,” of course, but what does it say about the quality of the current exams?
The Curmudgeon asks, “Where is the growth of skills and knowledge that comes with invested time, experience, and dedication to the Service, producing as a natural consequence the ever-increasing ability to pass the exams? Where are the proven benefits from this new license structure to the Amateur Service? To the industry? Isn’t this just more instant gratification for the ‘I want it….and NOW!’ crowd?” And so the culture and quality of the Service shift and continue to move over time.
Overall, this is a serious problem, and there aren’t any quick and easy solutions. Much of any reform that may occur will have to come from within the Amateur Service itself. But there is a definite role for the industry in the pursuit of this reform: recognizing, encouraging, supporting, and demanding the improvement of the Amateur Service! Not solely as a pro bono initiative; it’s really in the self-interest of the industry too!
Mobile Application Development Places You Ahead Of Competition
There was a time when the mobile phones were thought to be electronic devices that could replace the conventional phones. The evolution of mobile phones into smart phones to offer both, telecommunication services and internet application services, has brought a sea of change in the world of information technology. The first phase saw the desk top personal computer being replaced by the lap tops and palm tops. Now that the features are available within the mobile phones, people are more interested in the buying the mobile phones.
The smart phones are much more portable than the lap tops. It is the internet connection that is needed to make the mobile phone work as a device to have accesses to the websites and its applications. The service providers nowadays offer both telecommunication services as well as internet services.
The smart phones help the businesses to be in real time and know the latest developments in the market. This is the age of quick communications. The business can take the advantage of having accesses to the communication before the competitors do.
In big business the higher management personnel need not carry the laptop because the smart phones can serve the purpose. All the information can be accessed though the mobile phone in the palm.
Earlier the website applications were made compatible with the lap top technology. Now the businesses are realizing that the websites need to be accessible through the mobile too and bringing about necessary changes in the websites.
Earlier the computer and internet enabled the businesses to reach every house hold and offices. Now the costing of the mobile phones is such that every member of the family and every top management personnel in an organization can have a smart phone individually. This has made it necessary for the websites to be compatible with operating systems such as Android, Black berry and iPhone.
Some people think that the limitation of the mobile application to be compatible with a single operating system platform can limit the utility of the application. There are technologies that enable the application to be compatible with all the operating system platforms. It becomes the responsibility of the application development to keep pace with the latest technological development and offer it to the clients at an affordable price.
Some may find the mobile application development to be expensive but considering the return on investment, the pricing turns out to be cheap in the longer run. If your website is not compatible with the smart phones it does not mean that the competitors will stop to upgrade their website. On the contrary this can give them a chance to have accesses to the buyer before you do.
It all depends on how early you contact an adept profession mobile application development company and take the advantage of being more technically sound than your competitors.