Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Employee communication, in the beginning …

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I've been looking for it for almost two decades, and now that I've found it, I'm savoring it—and I hope you'll savor it with me, bit by bit, as I make my way through.

It's the first book on employee communication—written before the birth of most communication practitioners and our communication buzzwords, habits of thought, sacred cows, tired arguments, lost causes and artificial limitations.

Plainly titled Sharing Information with Employees and published in 1942 by the Stanford University Press, it's written by an Alexander Heron, about whom all I know so far is that he was a "Director of Industrial Relations for a large and far flung enterprise." ("Industrial relations" was a department without a precise modern-day equivalent, which generally oversaw the relationship between management and labor.)Books

The introduction, by a Paul Eliel of Stanford and signed Jan. 8, 1942, claims that a survey of business literature revealed not a single previous book about "sharing information with employees."

… strange as it seems, while all of our general or special works on labor relations, personnel management, and similar subjects have discussed in great detail how to employ specific techniques, none of them have more than touched on the most fundamental of all techniques in labor management: how to convey information to employees. None of them have ever thought it necessary to attempt to answer such questions as: How do you tell employees what you are doing or proposing to do? How do you tell them about the business in which they are engaged? How do you tell them the importance of the project on which they are working?

And it's in his introduction that Eliel introduces the first potentially debatable idea, by claiming: "Implicit throughout Mr. Heron's treatment is consideration of the business as a social institution as well as an organization designed to carry out economic objectives."

Before our first proper installment in this series—which I grandly hope through my commentary and our discussions will amount to a white paper—can we all agree to stipulate that corporations (to which we give so many of our precious hours and so much of our hearts' blood, whose products and services we use, and whose vast resource-taking and refuse-making we live with, whose varying financial stability makes and breaks our livelihoods and sometimes our very lives) are social institutions and not mere economic engines?

Or can we not?

My Super Bowl sundae

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I'm taking some snaps at quarterback in the preseason scrimmage for the Chicago Force women's professional football team on Sunday, and I'm starting to freak out.

What began as a gonzo journalism lark,
and what then evolved into what the coach called my personal "fantasy camp," has taken on proportions of importance that have
taken me a little aback.

Over the weekend, I spent the last half hour gaping blankly at the 3-D Monsters vs. Aliens but asking and re-asking the uncertain question: Is Lion Zone Cutback a red or a black call? Yesterday I spent a wholly inappropriate portion of a funeral mass trying to conjure up a way to make better throws on the 30 Under play. And yesterday I lay awake with with a dry mouth, going over and over my read keys on the X-80 Choice.

I don't know how well I'm going to play in my personal Super Bowl, but I do know this: No matter how long our childhood dreams have been dormant, I've learned from my temporary teammates and from my own pounding heart that they retain breathtaking power.

Wish me and my inner child luck on Sunday.

@pocalypse now

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A cat named Andrew Goodman actually led a blog item this way:

Guy Kawasaki gave a controversial keynote talk about his legendary Twitter tactics at SES New York last week.

Sitting a few chairs from @LisaBarone and like Lisa,
tweeting my response to the session, I couldn't help but wonder if we
were watching the same presentation. While I was unsettled by some of
what I was hearing, I also felt like the presenter was self-deprecating
and self-aware … and like he said, transparent about his sometimes
aggressive tactics. @LisaBarone, on the other hand, "threw up a bit in
her mouth," (OK those were words put in her mouth by @dannysullivan),
thought Kawasaki was "making an ass of himself," etc. I just didn't see
the evidence. I thought @LisaBarone was overreacting.

After digesting the entire talk for the rest of the day, Lisa's position grew on me ….

What efficient communication!

First, you tell every asshole on Twitter what you're hearing as you hear it.

Then, you think about what you've heard.

Then, you tell everybody how you and @LisaBarone (and don't forget @dannysullivan) experienced the original session.

And only then do you get around to giving us your considered opinion, which, by this point, I'd rather die than digest.

@andrewgoodman: Get your @ss to a store and buy a notebook.

@lisabarone: Let me guess: You came around to @andrewgoodman's original point of view after all.