Every posting, message, or email creates an impression, a public persona, from which other people make judgments. We make judgments about others, but how often do we turn that critical analysis on ourselves?

For every opinion, there is an equal and opposite opinion.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law...Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?” Most Americans adults have heard the Miranda rights from countless television and movie crime drams. The first statement of the Miranda rights is a simple but powerful declarative sentence. “You have the right to remain silent.” Not speaking will not be held against you, but the suspect is told that any words spoken “can and will be used against you in a court of law.” U.S. law provides the opportunity for reflection and protection against self-incrimination with the last sentence asking, “Do you wish to speak to me?” Reflect and ask yourself, it is wise to post or send an email containing that information?

An organization's proprietary, internal information is constrained only by an understanding that stake-holders will keep organizational matters within the organization.

A damaging email forwarded outside the organization is indicative of problems within the organization.

The written word imparts a gravitas the spoken word lacks. The underlying assumption is that time and thought has been expended on what was written, even if that is not the case.

A car crash at seventy-five miles an hour results in glass and steel strewn about the roadway. Emergency workers attend to the injured drivers, passengers and bystanders, and remove the wreckage. An electronic communication wreck lacks the visual drama, but imparts damage just as real and just as permanent. A momentary lapse in judgment may prove catastrophic for the writer, their family, coworkers, and stakeholders.

Emails, texts and social media promise the writer the power to be heard…In a society where relinquishing control is viewed as weakness, power is relinquished through every message sent without forethought to the potential consequences.

In the Darwinian environment of business, one's most provocative words are naturally selected by competitors to be hurled back at them at the most inopportune moments. Do not arm your adversaries.

Neither inherently good nor evil, electronic communication platforms are 100 percent dependent on user input.

Once a message has been sent electronically, the writer has ceded power not just to the recipient, but to whomever the recipient chooses to forward the information. To access electronic communication is to control it. The recipient, not the writer, has power over future dissemination of the writer’s words.

Most people do not see their words as power.

A single employee, with one message, can succinctly capture the essence of a corporation the same way an iconic photograph captures a moment. Unfortunately, it is usually the negative massages that are published or used in lawsuits.

An email cannot be ignored. You may wish an email was not sent to you, because you learned what you did not want to know, but it must be acted upon because there is now a permanent record linking you to that information.

Emails are viewed as an essential historical record of an organization. A record that cannot be expunged must be created with care or not created at all.

History was once rewritten by the victors. Now we write our own immutable histories with every email, text, and post.

...with electronic communication, what one writes in a moment, eternity will not erase.

Electronic communication has transmuted conversations into durable and accessible records. Revisionist history has gone the way of the phone booth.

People act in ways to maximize their self-interest within a company, so create incentives that align employee's objectives with the organization's mission statement. Reward compliance with core values as much as profitability, especially in the face of competitive pressures.

EWI: Emailing While Intoxicated

If you don't know the answer to a question, don't guess, don't speculate, don't hypothesize, don't make a joke it by email, tweet, conference call, or at a press conference...Somehow, eventually, the electronic communication surrounding a situation will be made public and clarify and clarify what actually transpired.