Recently, I listened to an outbound voicemail message made by one of the employees of a company I own.  I seldom call this guy’s number, as I try to keep my nose out of the businesses run by others, but nonetheless, the outbound message that I listened to on his phone was, at best, monotonous.

This is probably the one-thousandth time in my long business career that I have been taken aback by the surrogate representation of one of my people.  My first thought when I heard his outbound message was, “ugh … anybody listening to this is going to paint a mental image of someone who simply has no joie de vivre.”

So, I called this particular individual (who, by the way, is a wonderful person and a super-performer) and informed him of how I personally interpreted his outbound message. He is a young guy and was quite grateful for the constructive criticism.  

(Constructive Criticism … the subject of an entirely different future blog.)  

But it got me to thinking. In today’s electronic age, there are so many avatars being employed as substitutes for the individual him or herself.  Think about it … in addition to voice mail, there are now electronic signatures, stand-in representatives (such as FaceBook and MySpace), and, of course, those avatars themselves!   

Whereas just two decades ago, an individual had complete control over his or her surrogate representations, today people can go to your FaceBook and/or MySpace site to not only learn how you think, but also how you play. (A recent newsletter from Duquesne University’s Career Development Office to all students took great pains to point out just how much employers are now relying upon what I’m sure students consider to be otherwise benign web-based musings for solid and reliable G-2 on that individual.)  

As a professor at Duquesne, I know that when I call one of my students’ cell phones, the odds are roughly nine in ten that I am going to hear some flippant outbound message … “It’s Dave. Leave it.”  Unfortunately, this message is also too often preceded by hip-hop or rap-type music (and I use the word “music” advisably), thus doubling the irritation.

Again, the world is judging you all the time. Conversely, you are constantly leaving “electronic markers” all over that same world!  

My advice is that everyone; undergrad, graduate, or even a 25-year veteran conduct a regular audit of his/her surrogate imagery. Perhaps this audit should be done by someone other than the individual him or herself? After all, this is all about forests and trees.