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February 28, 2008

College tours: a worst practice in communication

The baby of the family (6’2”, 180 lbs.) is graduating from high school this June, so we’re in the process of finding Nick a college. Last week he and I visited four institutions of higher learning, and I was reminded once again of how painful these experiences can be.

This is surprising, really, because in other ways colleges communicate very effectively with prospective students and their parents. The direct mail materials they send, for example, tend to be colorful and well-designed, with lots of photos of smiling students and quotes from those students telling why the college is so cool.

Most college web sites are also pretty good (here are two from schools my son is considering Emmanuel College and Temple University), featuring easy navigation, effective search, and lively graphics.

And many universities have enlisted social media in their communication efforts, with programs encouraging prospective students to connect with current students through such venues as AOL Instant Messaging and Facebook.

So if these colleges are good at communicating at a distance, why are they so bad at face-to-face communication? Out of four colleges we visited last week, two of them started their tours with a mind-numbing, worst-practice PowerPoint® presentation, narrated by an Admissions geek. (The third offered a presentation after the campus tour, but we skipped out.)

The presentations were as bad as you’d find at any corporation: a series of slides with bulleted lists, with the presenter reading every word.

After the first three minutes of the first presentation, Nick whispered to me, “This is just for the parents, not for the kids.”

Well, no, because I was as cranky as he was. So, to amuse myself, I began to silently consult on how to run the session better. There were about 15 prospective students (and about 20 parents) in the group. Why not ask a couple of students a warm-up question like, “What is one reason you’re here this morning?” And a student would answer, “Because my mother made me,” and everyone would laugh.

Or run some You Tube-type clips, produced by actual students? Or put out a bunch of facts, then give students a pop quiz, with a prize for the kid who got the most correct answers (and a prize for the one who got the fewest correct answers).

I could have gone on, but luckily the presentation came to an end, and it was time to take the campus tour (which wasn’t that great, either, but at least we were walking around in the fresh air, able to see things for ourselves, with not a single PowerPoint slide in sight).

Posted by Alison Davis at 03:42 PM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2008

E.B. White on information overload

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to do something about the scores of unread books I have stacked throughout my home and office: either read them or donate them (or read them AND donate them; the point is to reduce the number).

So I picked up a copy of One Man’s Meat, the 1944 collection of essays by E.B. White about his experiences on a farm in coastal Maine. Mr. White is today best known for his children’s books (including Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little) and for editing The Elements of Style, but during his long writing career, he also wrote nonfiction for The New Yorker for six decades.

One Man’s Meat is a terrific book: well-written and an evocative portrait of what life was like in rural Maine in the 1930s and 1940s.

My favorite was a short essay called “Incoming Basket” from August 1938. Even though the piece was written decades before the term “information overload” was ever coined, Mr. White perfectly describes the phenomenon.

He writes about setting up a desk at his farmhouse in Maine. “(It) looked incomplete when I got it set up, so I found a wire basket and put that on it, and threw a few things in it. This basket, however, gave me a lot of trouble for the first couple of weeks. I had always had two baskets in New York. One said IN, the other OUT . . . Here, with only one basket, my problem was to decide whether it was IN or OUT, a decision a person of some character could have made promptly and reasonably but which I fooled round with for days . . . trying to combine the best features of both and using it as a catch-all for migratory papers no matter which way they were headed. This last was disastrous. I found a supposedly out-going letter buried for a week under some broadsides from the local movie house.

“The basket is now IN. I discovered by test that fully ninety per cent of whatever was on my desk at any given moment were IN things. Only ten per cent were OUT things—almost too few to warrant a special container. This, in general, must be true of other people’s lives, too. It is the reason lives get so cluttered up—so many things (except money) filtering in, so few things (except strength) draining out. The phenomenon is difficult for me to understand and has not been explained, to my knowledge, by physicists: how is that, with a continuous interchange of goods or “things” between people, everybody can have more coming in (except money) than going out (except strength).”

Great stuff—made me happy. The bad news is that I’m keeping the book (IN) instead of donating it (OUT).

Posted by Alison Davis at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2008

How NOT to write an employee handbook

My 20-year-old son Sam just got a low-level hourly job. On his first day of work, he received a two-hour orientation and a 29-page handbook called “Company Rules.”

Since I’m interested in any form of employee communication, I read the handbook and was immediately struck by its harsh tone. For example, here’s the opening paragraph:

“The following rules apply to all employees and shall be changed from time to time as deemed necessary by the director. Each and every rule must be read and strictly adhered to. If any rule is not adhered to, it may be considered grounds for dismissal. This is NOT a CONTRACT.”

This cranky, hectoring voice continued through the entire 29 pages. A few excerpts:

“ALL phone messages will be on standard telephone message pads and will be entirely filled out regarding time, date, Mr./Mrs./Miss/Ms./ etc. All incoming messages will be placed in the appropriate manager’s ‘message box’ and not placed on his/her desk unless so directed by said manager.”

“Proper grammar is to be used at all times in the facility. Phrases such as ‘yeah’ ‘dese, dems and doze’ and ‘ain’t’ are EXTREMELY UNPROFESSIONAL and should not be used anywhere in the company by receptionist, technicians or anyone employed by the company.”

And my two favorite items:
“At all times clients should be addressed in a polite, concerned, interested manner. Show that you care about the clients’ problems and indicate genuine concern. Smile at all times, even on the phone, and your voice will always sound friendly and interested. Irritated voices directed at clients will not be tolerated under any circumstances.”

“Irritated, impatient and/or sarcastic voices are not to be used when talking to managers or co-workers.”

Of course, the handbook document is the epitome of irritated and inpatient, written in a way that is the opposite of “friendly and interested.”

I wondered if this negative tone was consistent with the way the company is managed.

“This handbook sounds kind of mean,” I said to Sam. “Are the managers that way as well?”

“No, not at all,” he replied. “They’re actually very nice.”

I wonder what the author of the handbook was thinking when he or she wrote it. Senior managers probably believe they need to have the rules written down, so they can legally fire someone who doesn’t obey the rules. But what they don’t realize is that even rules can be communicated in a way that is kind, loving, supportive and encouraging.

Maybe Sam’s company needs to hire a professional communicator to help. : )

Posted by Alison Davis at 09:15 AM

February 06, 2008

“Two monologues do not make a dialogue”

I took a trip to Denver earlier this week and, as usual when I travel, brought along a book. I had high hopes for this one—The Design of Future Things by Don Norman, the psychologist and industrial designer—because I find this author thoughtful and provocative. (For more on the book, Don Norman and his approach, visit www.jnd.org)

Unfortunately, the book was not what I expected—it was focused on technology design, not general design, so it was rather techno-geeky (although useful for people designing a product). However, one section, called “Two monologues do not make a dialogue,” that struck me as relevant for anyone who communicates.

In the section, Mr. Norman is writing about the problem with many machines (including navigation systems); they’re not truly interactive and don’t collaborate. To make his point, Mr. Norman cites the Greek philosopher Socrates.

“Two thousand years ago, Socrates argued that the book would destroy people’s ability to reason,” Mr. Norman writes. “He believed in dialogue, in conversation and debate. But with a book, there is no debate: the written word cannot answer back.

“Today, the book is such a symbol of learning and knowledge that we laugh at this argument. But take it seriously for a moment . . . Socrates’s point is valid: a technology that gives no opportunity for discussion, explanation, or debate is a poor technology.”

Mr. Norman goes on to reflect on his own experience as a business executive and as a chair of university departments. He’s learned that “the process of making a decision is often more important than the decision itself. When a person makes decisions without explanation or consultation, people neither trust nor like the result, even if it is the identical course of action they would have taken after discussion or debate.”

And here’s the crux of the matter for me. Mr. Norman writes, “Many business leaders ask, ‘Why waste time with meetings when the end result will be the same?’ But the end result is not the same, for although the decision itself is identical, they way it will be carried and executed and, perhaps most importantly, the way it will be handled if things do not go as planned will be very different with a collaborating, understanding team than with one that is just following orders.”

Here’s the big question: If dialogue is so important for gaining buy-in, why is there so little dialogue in employee communication? So much of communication is simply information delivered. There’s a shocking lack of face-to-face, and what exists is predominantly one-way (think of a town hall meeting with mostly presentation and only 10 minutes for Q&A).

Perhaps most surprisingly, even channels that provide rich opportunities for dialogue—like an intranet—are underutilized. How many companies have dared to offer message boards, wikis, blogs, and other interactive forums?

Until communication becomes a dialogue—offering access and participation—it’s like a book—containing information, for sure, but little in the way of engagement.

Posted by Alison Davis at 05:08 PM | Comments (1)