One on one, “I need to see now’s…” typed out office letters that carried the scent of White Out, long drawn out telephone conversations, boring group meetings in rooms so hot male sweat from six meetings back continued to fill the air. This is how bosses once took charge of getting their words, demands and commands put into action.
Today we’re seeing text messages, email’s on personal accounts, never ending meetings to announce we’re going to have another meeting and the every popular, “Hey gotta a minute…” when they should’ve said, “I need an hour.”
The world of business is too busy to conduct business and the one time messenger isn’t available because companies have streamlined too close to the bone.
To help make up for it, leader’s are putting extreme amounts of faith in social networking tools to reach your place on the map to do nothing more than GPS your booty back to their chosen destination; the best communication to date is blogging.
I’m not talking about Dear Jane Diaries or blogs about how to take better care of your heart and kids. Companies have set up inner office blogging sights where leaders can tap into your process hourly, daily or the next time a great thought requires support. What makes it an incredible tool isn’t how quick and on the go it is but rather the idea that many of todays newly crowned more up to date leaders are giving employees a place to be heard. They have the opportunity to reply, to add to or suggest taking away.
The age of face to face conversations is over. Having social skills requires nothing human and everything computer.
In front of 200 writers this past weekend I vibrantly shouted, “I love the internet! The author in me cherishes every moment that I can pick up a subject and run without having to deal with witch eyes and a big nose with a wart the size of New Jersey staring back at me. I love it when a single thought can wrap itself around the world and become a reality within an hour.”
On the other side of the white picket fence is a coworker that disagrees claiming the idea of blogging and not physically talking has destroyed the foundation of success. So he spends the majority of his day walking through the building extending his open palm to others who require his creative services.
Neither side is wrong…
As much as I thoroughly enjoy human relationship and the process of generating layer after layer of history from its success…results require instant attention to which blogging gifts me with. I honestly get more from blogging with Master Todd Harris than I do sitting a class.
The coworker calls the act one based on laziness believing eye to eye contact makes the relationship firm and unwilling to break at the edges.
The art of reacting without assuming is the single more powerful pet peeve I have with social networking. I can’t hear what the emotion is saying coming from their fingertips.
According to the man behind the book Tribes, Seth Godin believes blogging and other social networking quickly tightens up the workplace by putting communication at the top of the game. He uses business consultant Meagan McDonald as a great example because she doesn’t fall into the typical business tactics of using sports phrases and motivational speaker affirmations to guide her tribe. Blogging makes leaders out of everyone. It enforces the idea of utilizing the strength of conversation to figure out your own path without having to rely on waiting and waiting and waiting for a department head to bless your decision with spiritual energy to get the job done.
Through blogging there are no cries for help, belittling of employees or voices raised.
We use blogging in my current world of radio commercial production and have accessed more lines of success in the past three months than the five years I’ve led this team. The moment you stop talking about your day and put focus on the efforts of getting the job done properly the easier the final steps are in leading your business toward tomorrow and seeing it as less of a challenge because through blogged team communication the end result is less pressure on the different departments involved.
Blogging has taken a bad rap from Face Booker’s and other web sites that allow too many to live vicariously through the chapters of poets, politicians and people who can’t stop talking. When you take the time to invest more of your business into the act of blogging by using it as a place to communicate the result is a much tighter ship.
Your decision is to lead not manage. Godin calls it a critical choice. The hourly goal should always be to connect then inspire.
I call it my personal McDonalds fast food line…if the person taking the order is hitting the wrong buttons, the person at the first window is charging the customer the wrong amount which means the food picked up at window number two isn’t what the customer ordered. Company blogging that works is based on every role being an important part of the customer coming back. The only way that can happen is if everybody is shooting for the same goal and that requires conversation. Get your business to start blogging. Your life will change. If you still believe in face to face meetings host a party. Until then catch up with the competition.
I will always believe in you first…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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