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"Courtesy of a plethora of very irked Yahoo employees, here is the internal memo sent to the company about a new rule rolled out today by CEO Marissa Mayer, which requires that Yahoo employees who work remotely to relocate to company facilities. "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home," reads the memo to employees from HR head Jackie Reses. "We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together." Painfully awkward as this is phrased - I might have used "being present together" - it means every Yahoo get to your desks stat!"

In the digital age, we increasingly use written language in place of face to face chat or phone calls. But the advantages email, chat, and text give us in speed come with limitations in communicating emotional tone. Enter emoticons and emojis. Not just a playful supplement to language, these new tools allow for complexity in tone and emotion never before possible in written language, as well as provide new opportunities for creative expression. Rapidly spreading throughout culture, emoticons and emojis fill a void in written language that few realized we so desperately needed.

This is worth reading and thinking about on both a governmental and at an organizational level. As elements in a system become more interdependent, and as the speed and scale of financial, informational, contractual, physical transactions between the elements of a system increase, the system can become more prone to big shocks from relatively small disruptions.  If Churchill said in the age of radio that "..A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on" what would he have said about organizations in the age of mobile devices, Twitter and YouTube?

The death toll in Egypt so far is over 300, with thousands wounded. Way to jump on a trending #hashtag to push your products, Kenneth Cole.

Oh, and in case you missed it, there is already a parody Kenneth Cole PR Twitter account at http://twitter.com/KennethColePR Hours after its creation, it already has 3,633 followers. Electric speed indeed.

Also of interest: http://twitter.com/#!/dacort/status/33303368441004033 Damon Cortesi posted a screenshot of the KC fan page activity.

The problem we see today is that many leaders cannot themselves count on a long-term strategy; they know direction will change, and they find it "de-energizing' that they can't help their employees provide one concrete, accurate answer to direction. What we have seen is that dialogue about direction on a more frequent basis, being honest and open about the unknown, is the best strategy. Leaders need to learn how to do this because frequent, ongoing dialogue about direction and redirection are not part of the traditional leadership training manual that taught 5-year strategy planning.