Technology is too Wimpy for Teamwork

One of my recent grad school assignments required that I work collaboratively with a group of my classmates. In a traditional classroom setting, a group project would most likely be completed in a series of in-person meetings.

But I’m enrolled in an online academic program. I’ve never met my classmates in person. The only reason I know what my professor looks like is because he records short introductory videos for each week of class.

So imagine how difficult it was for me to lead a group assignment using an internet-based discussion board and a group wiki. Because we’re all working adults with varying schedules, the communication was sporadic and unpredictable.

I tried to provide encouragement and direction through the discussion board. Each group member volunteered to write a portion of the assignment. We used the wiki to format and finalize our assignment.

While we accomplished the task at hand, I’m not convinced that the discussion board and wiki were conducive to effective group work. There really wasn’t a moment in the process where we worked collaboratively to weave our assignment together in a way that fulfills the benefits of teamwork.

In my opinion, the missing element was the in-person meeting where we could have gotten to know each other and figured out a way to incorporate all of our strengths into the project.

Technology is great. It makes my job a lot easier. But it’s too wimpy to replace good old-fashioned, face-to-face human interaction. Web conference anyone?

Try POST Strategy: People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology

To be completely honest, I created this blog several years ago as an experiment. I wanted to see if I could maintain it. As you can see, that didn’t work out. I also wanted to see if blogs really work. I’m still not sure. As a marketing communications professional, I see more value in blogs for marketing and community outreach purposes than for personal purposes.

If I was developing a strategic plan for a blog hosted by a municipal government, I would use the method recommended by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research in their book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. According to the authors, they use the “POST method” to build social technology strategies. “POST” stands for people, objectives, strategy and technology (p. 66). The technology will be a blog.

People: In a nutshell, a municipal government delivers services to its residents. Those services can include anything from garbage collection and infrastructure to public safety and facilities. If I was to create a blog for these residents, I need to make sure that they would engage with this type of social media and find value in its use.

Objectives: Li and Bernoff recommend choosing from the five most common business objectives for a social media initiative of this type – listening, talking, energizing, supporting and/or embracing (p. 68-69). For a municipal government, I would choose the listening and talking objectives. Governments don’t sell products like private businesses so the other objectives don’t apply or wouldn’t be considered priorities. City governments should listen to the needs of their residents and show residents how the City is investing their tax dollars.

Strategy: I believe a City government should begin with a strategy to listen to its residents and then prepare to educate and engage them through online interaction. I would suggest developing a strategy to monitor the social media technologies most used by residents of the jurisdiction. While reading and listening to their online comments, create a method for tracking those comments and gaining insights from common themes. Then formulate methods to provide information that will help the residents understand the special issues or complexities of City government. And finally, engage these online resources as often as possible. Two-way communication is the key to gaining their trust and honest feedback. Disagreeing and arguing would ruin the value of this strategy. In essence, this strategy is best summed up in three words: listen, educate and engage.

What do you think of this strategy? Am I missing anything?

New Pursuit: Master of Arts in Managerial Communication

As you can probably tell, I am not a consistent blogger. Although I find this social media technology fascinating and I read other people’s blogs, I haven’t found the time (or the inspiration) to put my own musings out there for everyone to see… yet.

Now that I’m pursuing a Master of Arts in Managerial Communication via an online classroom and one of my first classes is “21st Century Communication Technologies,” I may be dusting off this old blog and beginning again.

You can learn more about my current work here and you can learn more about me here.

When it comes to blogging, there are literally thousands of blogs out there. I’m not convinced that anyone is reading them or gaining anything from them. Here’s what I’m wondering:

• Do you really read other people’s blogs?
• How much time in the average week do you spend reading other people’s blogs?
• Do those blogs enrich your life, inspire you or entertain you?

PowerPoint is Not a Crutch

Enough! I can’t stand it anymore. No more boring, overcrowded, misspelled, teleprompter-type PowerPoint presentations. The next time you use PowerPoint, please focus on the power of the tool, not the lazy points.

Author Seth Godin wrote a free, easy guide called “Really Bad PowerPoint (And How to Avoid It)”. If you don’t want to read all ten pages, please heed these cliff notes:

PowerPoint as a Crutch:

• Read each slide word-for-word as if it’s a teleprompter
• Paste your entire report on the slides so the audience can barely see the words
• Hand out a verbatim transcript of the presentation so the audience reads instead of listens

PowerPoint as a Tool:

• First, make yourself cue cards. Write down your main points on good old-fashioned index cards.
• Second, create slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them. Use photos, clip art, graphs, simple diagrams and anything that demonstrates emotional proof of your points.
• Third, create a written document as a “leave-behind.” But don’t hand out that document until after the presentation. Let the audience know it’s coming so they can sit back and soak in your presentation without having to take notes.
• Fourth, create a feedback cycle. If you need approval, hand out a project approval form with room for signatures. If it’s a vote, create a ballot that’s easy to complete and hand back. You get the idea.

Godin’s best piece of PowerPoint advice is: “You can use the screen to talk emotionally to the audience’s right brain (through their eyes), and your words can go through the audience’s ears to talk to their left brain.”
Godin’s Five Rules for PowerPoint Slides:

1. No more than six words on a slide. Ever.
2. No cheesy images. Use professional images from an online source. (stock.xchng is free)
3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions. None.
4. Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never (ever) use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs.
5. Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They’re emotional, and they won’t work without you there. If someone wants your slides to show “the boss,” tell them that the slides go if you go.

One Final Note: Remember that every slide doesn’t have to stand on its own. You can use one slide to set up a point and then the next slide to bring it home.

That’s fantastic, free advice from Seth Godin!

Caucus Communication

I have been counted.. finally!

I’ve lived in Iowa all of my life but I’ve never had the chance to participate in the Iowa Caucuses. Every four years when the big event comes around, I have to watch from the sidelines. Journalists report what happens. Ethically, they can’t participate.

Not this year! Now that I no longer work for a media company, I joined in the political frenzy. I got to see the caucus process first hand. What an exercise in communication!

I attended a Democratic Caucus at a local church last night. Imagine 220 people milling around a small church hall trying to build support for seven different candidates. I was amazed at the diversity in the room — college students, young professionals, teenagers, entire families, retired folks with oxygen tanks and single moms with their kids in tow. There were people discussing the issues, toddlers crying and supporters applauding new recruits. That’s democracy in action!

Throughout the night, I witnessed the power of face-to-face communication. I watched as friends and neighbors convinced each other to support Obama, Clinton or Edwards. The arguments may not have been sound in every case, but the passion was infectious.  At the end of the night, we tallied three delegates for Obama and two each for Clinton and Edwards.

Today, I am proud of the big green “X” on my hand. It means I am now a part of history. I am a registered voter with the power to choose our next president.

Let Me Hear It

Noisy Newsrooms

I used to work in a newsroom. Actually, I’ve worked in five different radio and television newsrooms in Iowa. Newsrooms are loud, obnoxious working environments…  especially when it’s close to air time. I thrive on all that activity – the talking, the screaming, the running and the panic.

If you work in a cubicle maze or a closed-off office, you may thrive on silence. Maybe you like to quietly tap away at your keyboard. But there’s one proofreading technique you could learn from a noisy newsroom… read your work OUT LOUD.

All the broadcast journalists I’ve every worked with read their copy out loud before going on the air. It’s a habit our professors taught us in journalism school. I still do it today.

Listen to Yourself

When you listen to your writing, you can catch mistakes before your co-workers or customers do.

• When you stumble on a word or phrase, take a closer look at the spelling and word choice.
• If you get lost in the copy, consider rewriting it to make your message more clear.
• If your voice naturally takes a break at a comma, think about using a period. Keep it to one thought per sentence.

It’s such a simple proofreading technique. It works on emails just as well as business reports. And if your cube mate doesn’t appreciate this technique, whisper. That works, too.

Catch the Errors

ACT’s WorkKeys Business Writing Assessment tests for those kinds of mistakes. In fact, ACT’s website lists the most common business writing errors. Here’s a few you could catch, if only you could HEAR them:

• Sentence Structure – sentence fragments, run-on sentences, comma splices
• Mechanical – misspelled words, incorrect or missing punctuation, extra capitalization
• Grammatical – incorrect verb tenses, shifts in tense, incorrect subject-verb agreement, unclear pronoun references, missing words
• Word Usage – improper or poor word or symbol choices that interfere with communication

To hear what these errors sound like, read this site out loud.

Yes, S.I.R.!

When you need to brief your boss in person or in writing, consider using the S.I.R. technique. I found this great business communication tip on www.sideroad.com. When Richard Fouts sits down to write, he organizes his work according to S.I.R. or Situation, Impact and Resolution.

Fouts writes: S.I.R. “was given to me by a former marine sergeant who used this model to brief his commanders, under fire, when facts were critical and time could mean the difference between life and death.”

So maybe your work isn’t “life and death,” but this is a simple method to communicate clearly and succinctly. It works by answering three simple questions:

1. What’s the situation?
2. What impact is it causing?
3. What’s your recommended resolution?

When time is money, these questions get to the heart of the problem and its solution. The S.I.R. method also shows your boss that you’re a problem-solver not a problem-screamer.

See examples of the S.I.R. method in action.

Email vs. Voice Mail

Like many of you, when my “to do” list is long I rely on email to do the communication work for me. It’s so much easier to email my co-workers than to talk to them in person. Even voice mail takes longer than typing a quick message. But I run the risk of losing that human contact.

I’ve learned that making a request in person or over the phone seems to be more powerful and productive (even though it takes more time). I found this simple comparison chart that pits email against voice mail. Deanne Gradous, a Twin Cities consultant, compares and contrasts the virtues of each on www.managementhelp.org. Here’s an excerpt:

Email:

• Requests attention
• May be read as the receiver desires
• Provides a correspondence record
• Preferred by visual learners

Voice Mail:

• Demands attention
• Must be heard at the delivered speed
• Provides record of original message only
• Preferred by auditory learners

The communication vehicle you choose should be determined by the purpose of your message, not by the length of your task list.

Make it Easy to Read

One of my favorite writing coaches is Ann Wylie. Ever since I attended her workshop in 2003, I’ve subscribed to her free newsletter and read her workbooks.

Most of her tips are related to magazine writing, marketing communications and promotional copywriting. But I think the following excerpt on “Cut Through the Clutter” also applies to writing business proposals, reports, letters and other professional documents.

Ann is right when she writes, “One of the best ways to respect your readers’ lack of time is by making your copy easier to read and understand.”

Four Ways to Make Your Copy Easier to Read and Understand

By Ann Wylie, president, Wylie Communications Inc.

Here are four tips for making your copy crisper, clearer and more concise:

1. Cut your paragraphs. Long paragraphs annoy readers. In fact, if your paragraph is too long, readers are likely to skim, scan or even skip it. I like Jon Ziomek’s 1-2-3-4-5 rule for paragraph length. Ziomek, a professor at the Medill School of Journalism, suggests that your paragraph contain:

• 1 main thought, expressed in
• 2 to 3 short sentences, taking up no more than
• 4 to 5 lines on the page

2. Slash your sentences. The longer your sentences, the less your readers will understand, according to an American Press Institute Survey on reader comprehension. The trick? Keep your average sentence length to 14 words for optimum understanding.

3. Translate jargon. What’s a “visual-duration-sensing apparatus”? That’s a clock to those of us who just use, and don’t make, them. To cut the clutter: If it’s not a phrase your Aunt Rowena would use, translate it by defining it on first reference or including a glossary. Better yet, don’t use terms your Aunt Rowena wouldn’t use.

4. Find your focus. One way to reduce the length of your copy is to focus each piece on a single message point. You say you have six messages? Then you have six pieces – not one, long, unwieldy piece. Think packages: boxes, sidebars and related stories.

That’s just simple advice from a writing master!

Writing Professional Emails

Let’s get started with the most-used business communication tool: email. The emails you send at work are not like the ones you send in your personal life. Every time you send an email from your work account, you’re making an impression on a prospect, vendor, customer or future employer.

Use the WHY Technique

I found this great technique on the Iced Gems Blog at www.simply-communicate.com. The WHY technique helps you structure each email you write into three distinct sections.

W stands for What – What is the email about? Explain it in your first sentence or paragraph. (But keep those paragraphs to 3-4 sentences!)

H stands for Hook – Next, add the reasons why the reader should be interested in what you are saying. Answer the question: “What’s in it for me (the reader)?”

Y stands for You – Always finish with a call to action or clear request. You’re explaining “what I want YOU to do” as a result of the email.

Focused Subject Line

Don’t forget the importance of the subject line! The words in that line not only make a first impression, but they also determine whether your message will be read. Your subject line should include the hook, your call to action or the purpose of the email.

Emails sent from work are just like the business letters of decades ago. Just because email is easier and faster doesn’t mean your email messages can’t be professional and polished.