In a comment on yesterday’s rant about my new big boss’ slightly retro communications style, Doug told me to cut the guy some slack. At least his newsletter wasn’t printed.
Later, in a post on his own site, Doug expanded on his point that he has many different options, each with their own purpose and weaknesses.
Yet these “21st Century” tools have their limitations. Twitter assumes your message needs no more nuance or detail than what 140 characters can convey – and that your entire staff will “follow” you. The Facebook fan page is fine if your school doesn’t block Facebook, you really don’t want any feedback, and that your entire staff will “friend” you. Blogs, podcasts, or infographics are great communication tools provided they are supplemented by and additional communication method that allows readers to know they have been updated. I rather doubt all my staff regularly have or check RSS feed readers.
I don’t disagree with any of this, or the idea that “Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.”.
However, the fact that the boss and the rest of our district leadership seem to automatically fall back on static, one-way communications tools is somewhat disingenuous. As I noted in my post, these are the same people who tell the community how students need to learn “21st century skills”. They need to practice their preaching. Â
On the other side of things, I’m also frustrated by many of my colleagues in the department and elsewhere who, as Doug noted don’t use RSS or other aggregation tools. Many people I speak to don’t even have a basic understanding of the concept.
This is not new technology. Blogs, audio and video sharing, social sharing, along with RSS have become the basic building blocks of modern communications and I think an understanding of them should be considered part of basic adult literacy. Certainly they are alternatives to be considered, along with email and pdf, when discussing how to better connect with a community.
BTW, I did suggest to the boss that he write a blog instead of a weekly newsletter and he agreed to consider the idea. I call that progress.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for your thoughtful and civil reply to my more snarky comments and blog post. You’re a good guy.
I do keep wondering, though, if organizational communications can really take advantage of the interactive nature of social media – at least between members in a hierarchy. I don’t see myself disagreeing with my boss in a “public” forum like I would with a peer.
Let us know how the boss’s blogging works out and thanks again for the response.
Doug
Well…I think you’re both wrong in your approach to this. :)
I think the main error is that no one is looking at the actual problem that needs to be solved. There _might_ be a communication issue that the supe is trying to solve, but that’s not clear yet from Tim’s posts. Advocating for a specific technology solution (or any technology solution) is putting the cart way before the horse. What are they actually trying to accomplish with the weekly newsletter? Is there a department-wide communication problem that requires imposing additional work (via emails that are practically mandatory to read) on everyone in the department, or just one or two people who aren’t listening/paying attention who need an individualized solution/intervention? (My assumption is that even the supe isn’t looking at the problem to be solved, based on my refusal to believe that a weekly PDF newsletter could ever be a logical solution to an internal communication problem.) ;)