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This email is confidential

Every day we get mail with text like this at the bottom:

This E-mail and any of its attachments may contain [big company] proprietary information, which is privileged, confidential, or subject to copyright belonging to [big company]. This E-mail is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient of this E-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying, or action taken in relation to the contents of and attachments to this E-mail is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this E-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and permanently delete the original and any copy of this E-mail and any printout.

Why do people put those tags on their mail? And do they mean anything? I can’t answer the first question, but the answer to the second is definitely No.

A notice like this is basically an attempt to make a contract: they send you the message and you agree to keep it confidential. But, of course, you haven’t agreed to anything simply by receiving a message. A valid contract also requires Consideration, that each party gets something of value from the agreement. There’s no value from just sending someone a message.

Read the rest of this story at John R. Levine’s blog (based on US law, but the basics will be similar in other countries so as a guide it should still apply).

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Tim Harford on How Failing is Essential

Well ok that’s my juicy headline, but watch the whole of this theRSA video and I’m pretty confident you’ll agree with me that that is in fact the essence of what he’s saying. My six-year old daughter has already figured out that failing at something is the point where you learn the most. Trial-and-error is what improves things, so if you don’t fail at something you wouldn’t be able to improve! So please, fail early and fail often! (and the Upstarta-way: cheaply)

 

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When every email looks like a lead

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I received an unsolicited email from an Australian company, which is illegal as per the Australian 2003 Spam Act legislation. So I notified ACMA with the raw email details as they request, as well as notifying the sender. What happened next is unfortunately typical. Rough flow below…

The person who initially received my reply forwarded it to their business associate, who then emailed me telling more about his company’s products and asking to connect with me on LinkedIn to establish a business relationship.

I responded, noting it was a pity he didn’t actually read the email that was forwarded to him, and that I was not in the least bit interested in connecting with a company that neither listens nor respects others (or local laws), and merely pushes its wares.

He replied again, saying that he did listen but at the same time still plugging his goods. He told how he had acquired a database of email addresses. In addition he merely expressed sorrow that the initial mail offended me somehow, apparently not at all getting the point that it wasn’t about offense but about invalid business practices and breaching local laws.

I left it there as further correspondence was clearly futile. I believe the *only* valid reply would have been to unequivocally apologise, appreciate that using purchased email lists tends to put you on the wrong side of the law in Australia, and to not mention/plug his products anywhere in that email.

But, I suppose some people regard any communication as a sales lead. From my perspective, it’s a typical profile of the worst type of sales people, not the type I ever want to do business with. Clearly all they care for is the sale, not the client.

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Teddybears and Openness

Loosely related to Upstarta principle#4 is the unfortunate tendency people often develop when developing something new: secrecy. For all the perceived disadvantages of talking with others, it’s a fact that talking about a topic focuses your own mind; even without the other person providing feedback or comments, you’ll often find logic flaws or other relevant insights just by having to verbalise.

Brian Kernighan & Rob Pike wrote in The Practice of Programming (1999, p123):

Another effective technique is to explain your code to someone else. This will often cause you to explain the bug to yourself. Sometimes it takes no more than a few sentences, followed by an embarrassed “Never mind, I see what’s wrong. Sorry to bother you.” This works remarkably well; you can even use non-programmers as listeners. One university computer center kept a teddy bear near the help desk. Students with mysterious bugs were required to explain them to the bear before they could speak to a human counselor.

That’s about computer programming, but I reckon it works for anything. And my own (non-scientific) experience is that writing it down doesn’t appear to have quite the same effect, it’s the verbalising that does the trick. I do prefer a person over a teddy bear as I take it a bit further than just discussing a code bug or problem.

I sometimes discuss something with a friend, and while I’m telling my story, conclusions dawn on me and in some cases even make me change my mind on some aspects. Perhaps that’s scary to some. It might appear to make more sense to mull things over for a while before discussing with anyone else, so you have things more developed and won’t be seen to change you mind “mid flight”. But so what? The longer you walk around with something, the more stuck it becomes and that includes possible flaws. You want to remain flexible enough to adjust your course and potentially even ditch an idea completely. The more you’ve invested (often mainly time), the more difficult that would become! Talking with someone, from very early on, is valuable. The results will be better, quicker.