Communication Layers
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.
Public Spaces
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.
Internal and Employee Communication Layers
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.
Great list. I'm often astounded at the conversations which occur in email that belong in other communication tools (IM, most often).
I like the point of using yammer for that 'qwasi real time' communication window of 1-4 hours. A few of us at NPC started using Yammer 2 weeks ago for prepping the launch of our new campus…right now it hovers around 1-8 hours instead of 4. Love to get it down.
How many people regularly use Yammer? Is it everyone? Or a select few who really "use" it and most of the others just check in periodically?
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Vince Reply:
November 8th, 2010 at 8:06 am
we have 60 staff, full and PT. Maybe 20 of them use Yammer with any regularity. It's about time to reacquaint some of them with it.
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Danny Bixby Reply:
November 8th, 2010 at 8:48 am
So about a 3rd. Cool. You mentioned training is necessary to get some up to speed. How did you go about that?
Perhaps a post for another time?
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Vince Reply:
November 8th, 2010 at 9:26 am
Buy everyone Chipotle and sit them down in a room with their laptops. plug into a projector and go for it. I make it worth their while by doing some training on strategies for social media at the same time.
Great stuff… what's the average age of your staff? Best guess…
Interesting to hear you are moving forward with SoChurch… I did the demo the other day, and while I am impressed with the team that is rolling it out – I'm not YET convinced it is solving the problems we have that we don't already solve with MailChimp, FB, and our WordPress driven website. I could see how it makes groups easier to communicate with – that's my favorite thing about it. We're still up in the air. Looking into Arena next…
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Vince Reply:
November 8th, 2010 at 10:29 am
Staff average age is probably 33-35.
We were in on The Table Project beta and we were about to roll it out to our church but it had a crucial thing missing.
What we are using SoChurch for is a group communication and organization tool that is internal in voice yet is managed by the leaders of the groups. We've gotten too big for central com on all that stuff.
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Jonathan Cottrell Reply:
November 9th, 2010 at 11:42 am
Hey Alex, looking forward to convincing you as we move forward. It sounds like you've gone through great lengths, already, to implement a lot of custom solutions. That's great! At the same time, as you know, our hope is to help people reduce their efforts and minimize the time necessary to communicate with people effectively, not be yet another platform that you add on top of the many you've already implemented.
Looking forward to providing you with more information along the way and helping solve your communication challenges in the future, even if that's not right away.
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Good stuff. Have you been sneaking into my office to read the notes for my presentation today? haha.
I know the subject of manners isn't that popular (and isn't in my presentation to some of the staff today), but I think it's an important consideration. For example, it's really annoying to me when people use gmail chat to just demand something of me, instead of first asking "Hey, are you around?" or at least starting with "Hi." It's the equivalent of barging into my office without opening your eyes to check if I'm in the middle of something or already talking to somebody else.
Regarding yammer… I think a lot of us have given up on it, honestly. Not enough of our staff use it. My attitude is that if people aren't reading, what's the point of writing? It's like what would be the point of putting a classified ad in the paper, when I can't think of anybody who actually subscribes to it anymore. If you can do something to get more people to actually read it – maybe we'd use it more.
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Vince Reply:
November 9th, 2010 at 6:10 am
Yammer needs a little reintroduction around the Gateway office…it's got all kinds of potential to help keep email down.
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great comment on facebook page vince–we experiemented w being voiced for outsiders and insiders, and found that it was most effective for those inside of our minsitry.
i'm also going to share w others in Campus Crusade how Yammer can reduce email.
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Pumped to have you rolling out SoChurch, Vince. Can't wait to see how it works for you and your ministry.
This is a great post that we'll be pointing people to, also, about communication strategy and implementation. Communication is no easy thing, and you've obviously done your homework and worked hard to implement plans that are cohesive and fitting for your ministry. Well done!
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Vince Reply:
November 9th, 2010 at 11:51 am
Thanks jonathan…loving what it will do for us. We full-on demoed and beta tested everything out there before deciding. It might not be right for everyone but it looks like a great fit for Gateway Church strategy.
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