The guys in this photo made an impact on my life long ago. They didn’t know it then. They might know now that they have shaped a lot of peoples lives. They don’t know me.
Name someone that doesn’t know you that made an impact on your life long ago and that impact is still part of who you are.
Wow. A touching story. Learning about love from a dog.
*warning – f-bombs
Last Minutes with ODEN from phos pictures on Vimeo.
Earlier this week I wrote about communication layers for organizations. Looking at your toolbox of communication apps and spaces it is important to categorize them in terms of context and voice. Who is the targeted recipient of the content and how do you voice it?
Here are the communication layers I use personally and the context and voice that I have in them starting with the outer layer and working my way in:
Twitter | the coffee shop
This is a public space. And like a coffee shop the content you broadcast is targeted at people you know, but it is overheard by people who may be listening. If they like what you have to say the may chime in and you make a new connection. This works the other way too.
Blog | my platform
This is my space. My words. This is where I give away the best thoughts I have to the world and engage in conversation about those thoughts.
Facebook | my living room
My living room is for people that I actually know. It’s not for strangers. I’ll accept friend requests from people I have a connection with but I keep my feed trimmed pretty tight so that it’s just family and close friends that I interact with. I’ll add that I treat Facebook email just like regular email. And I block every app from my feed (farmville).
Email | grand central
I have been trying really hard lately to reduce how much email I handle by pushing a lot of the interaction to Twitter and/or in person. When I need to document something or handle some details this is the place to keep it. I use Gmail and all the awesome GTD features like labels and server-side filtering to keep this place squeaky clean and efficient. I try to turn email around in 24-72 hours. I’m currently in the habit of working through email in the morning only…in one sitting. If you need me today then you need to move down a layer to Twitter DM/Text.
Twitter DM/Text Message | my phone
In this shrinking world where we are connected with more and more people, Twitter DM has replaced a lot of phone calls for me and in my world it carries the same priority as a text message (be warned, if you abuse it I will drop you. I’m talking to you auto DM’ers). Talking on the phone is so inefficient that I rarely answer when I don’t know who it is and I schedule just about every call I make on my calendar because it has become the new meeting for me.
In Person/Video Chat | get it done
When it’s time to get stuff done I go in person or video chat…not the phone. I hate the phone. For as unproductive as it is it takes up too much time and mind space.
Meetings | avoid them
I won’t even classify them as a necessary evil, they’re just plain evil. OK, maybe I speak too harshly. The traditional meeting is evil and unproductive. Lately I have been scheduling meetings for like 12 minutes in the hall. I picked up this tip form the book; Rework. It works well. Meetings aren’t social time…just get stuff done and go rock!
What are your layers looking like?
Technology and the communication tools that come with it are supposed to make things better. More productive. More Efficient.
I am a fan of tools, if they work and if my team will use them.
Here’s a run down of the workflow of communication layers that I’m trying to implement with the staff and leaders at Gateway Church. Starting with the outside/front door communications and moving toward the internal staff communications.
Main Website
This is still our main portal with the most content and traffic. It is voiced so that people with no affiliation with our organization can understand the content and navigate to the info they will be most interested in. People who are a part of our organization still use it and it is a very important tool for communicating with them but it is targeted at people who are not yet a part of our community.
Organization’s Twitter and YouTube channel
A companion to the website, our twitter account is voiced for people who are not yet a part of our community but is used also for communicating with insiders. YouTube videos are voiced to people not affiliated with us.
Organization’s Facebook Page(s)
I may get some disagreement here but I think Facebook is for people who have accepted your brand or organization as a part of their life at one level or another. Yes, some may find Facebook as a front door to your organization, but the voice and interactions on it are geared toward your community.
Organization’s Blog
This may differ for you in where you place your organization’s blog in these layers; but for us, a non-profit church, it fits in here. We find that it is a place that gets most traffic from Facebook and is read by community members. It serves as a place to provide more detailed info than Facebook.
Community Space
We are rolling out an app called SoChurch that is launching this month to provide more robust communication and group management for our church. Facebook can’t quite handle the functionality that we need. This also provides a way for us to voice directly to and with insiders. The app will work with Facebook and Twitter so that members won’t need to worry too much about tending to another social media profile.
There are a plethora of tools for communicating and implementing one without understanding where it fits in the layers will just frustrate your team and put everyone on different pages making an attempt at improving workflow do just the opposite.
Here are the layers we use, ordered by time sensitivity:
Face to Face | Real Time
Need an answer now? Don’t email, walk to their desk.
Instant Messaging/Video Chat/Phone Call | Real Time
We use Google Apps so we are all on a common platform for IM and video chat. We are also distributed throughout the city of Austin so face to face isn’t always an option. This may be true for you if you are on a large campus. I like IM a lot because a lot of ground can be covered while at the same time team members can multi-switch and keep moving on other things. A phone call works but requires more attention than an IM and can slow you down.
Text Message/Twitter DM | +/- 15 minutes
Not quite real time but close. If you don’t hear back in 15 minutes assume they are out of pocket and you may have to move to a slower platform.
Yammer | 1-4 hours
We use yammer for this layer and so far I’m digging it. Not everyone on your team will sign up for Twitter nor is all that content appropriate or helpful to the Twitter community. Yammer works like Twitter as far as functionality and it takes some training to get your team up to speed. This has helped us trim down a lot of email that should have never been emailed; “check out this link” or “what is everyone doing for lunch?” and it has even replaced more useful emails too.
Email | 24-72 hours
Email is not a real time communication tool! It’s not a project management tool either for that matter. I can say that by bringing in Yammer and Google apps my internal email has been cut in half or better. If you can establish with your team that you will not respond to email for at least 24 hours…you will be 90 percent of the way there in terms of communication efficiency. I recommend turning an auto-responder on that let’s people know that you will respond to their email in a day or two. I do this every couple months to remind people that there may be a better way to get a hold of me.
“What the Internet hucksters won’t tell you is that the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don’t know what to ignore and what’s worth reading.”
Even now, fifteen years later this is all too new to start making claims. Good or bad.
At the very least learn to navigate this vast ocean. It will bring virtue to your life right now.
ht- @gregswan
I’ve been on Twitter since soon after it launched and I signed up with a handle I had used for many sites; Locustfist. It has a ring to it. It’s catchy. It means something as posted here.
I’m thinking about changing it for a couple reasons.
1. I hear the comment that it sounds like some kind of karate technique. I am far from a fan of the martial arts so that rubs me the wrong way.
2. It’s misspelled a lot. I miss tweets.
3. It isn’t my real name. I just want to be me.
So unless you come up with a compelling reason why I should keep it, I will be changing it this week. If you’re following locustfist you won’t have to change anything, you’ll just notice that my user name has changed.
True.
What are you saying? How are you saying? Are people getting it?
This is John Stewart’s closing remarks from last Saturday’s event. It can be summed up in a few words not the least of which are the title of this post. Here are some other great quotes.
“I can’t control what people think this was, I can only tell you my intentions.“
“We hear EVERY DAMN DAY about how fragile our country is…on the brink of catastrophe. Torn by polarizing hate…and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done. But the truth is…we do… The only place we don’t is HERE [points to capital building] or on cable TV.”
There’s a lot to be learned about communication and messaging here.
| Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear | ||||
| Jon Stewart – Moment of Sincerity | ||||
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