It's time for another Friday-morning installment of "Ask the Murr," because most but not all communicators are cracklingly smart and intellectually honest.
Here are some of the more asshole-ish questions I've seen on various professional forums this week, and the answers their colleagues and I have refrained from providing. We'll start with the easiest one:
How can you change the "cynical" to a "how can I help?" mindset of a government employee considering the fact that the problem is deep rooted and endemic?
Fire, ensure remains jobless until ribs are showing, then rehire.
(Questions like this drive me bonkers, probably because I once manned an "Employee Communication Hotline" for a consulting company—an asinine attempt to grub for business. I actually had to try to square such circles, or convince potential clients that we could. "But first, let's do $30,000 in focus groups to see just what kinds of circles we're dealing with here ….")
A tiny rock hammer is a valued tool in brand building. Do you agree?
When the only tool you have is consultantspeak, every insight seems to revolve around hammers.
The communications profession is changing, are you ready?
You mean the communications profession is suddenly going to eclipse all others in terms of prestige, power and pay? Yes, I'm ready!
Are you (or your company) at risk of becoming obsolete?
Well, we all become obsolete sometime.
Don't get left behind
Are you perchance trying to scare me into buying something? No, but I bet you will be during your "free webinar … on 'Marketing with Interactive Collateral' which might be described as
2ndGen Digital Editions–with rich media embedded and google-type
analytics."
Have you started a "Personal Branding" strategy?
A 20-something internal communication manager answers: "Oh! Great question. I'm working on this now and have discovered what I thought was my personal brand strategy is now out dated!" This is her polite way of telling your bald, middle-aged ass that not only has she started a "Personal Branding" strategy, she's had one for years and is now fittin' to get a radical "Personal Branding" makeover. As for you, I'm thinking a hair piece would be a start.
What's Your Avatar Look Like?
It's nice to see that the recent global economic catastrophe hasn't distracted us from the important questions in life. Lucikly, this post answers its own question—and provides the solution to many of our modern problems:
"What needs to be added to the 'interaction layer' of avatars and voice-over-IP audio is … the 'process choreography' to enable collaborative decision-making. This includes the type of rigorous, physics-based modeling of advanced simulation environments as well as basic business processes such as document sharing."
Boy, you can say that again.
"What needs to be added to the 'interaction layer' of avatars and
voice-over-IP audio is … the 'process choreography' to enable
collaborative decision-making. This includes the type of rigorous,
physics-based modeling of advanced simulation environments as well as
basic business processes such as document sharing."
Quick, where's my tiny rock hammer?