BLOG: You have the right to remain silent...
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Communications by Committee Creates a Crisis
I think I’ve discovered the ultimate communications crisis: devising, much less executing, a communications plan for a large, disparate association of organizations with one common goal but many different motivations.Can you imagine a baseball team with no coach? Or the universal image of herding cats? That’s what I’m dealing with as the PR counsel for one of the member organizations. Their main mode of internal communications is a series of e-mails that reveal their SAT test scores on reading comprehension. The secondary mode is a series of irregularly called and irregularly attended meetings. AARRRRRRGGGGHHH!
These people, for the most part, are totally confident they know what’s important and are not listening to their communications people who are trying to work together in spite of their clients.
What would you do with such egos? How would you herd these cats?
Labels: crisis_communications
Comments:
I suppose drowning those cats is out of the question? :-)
I've been through the same situation - with little success, I might add. There are so many tools available now that are far better than e-mail, but it's difficult to get buy-in from the organization.
One article I read recently suggested using a wiki - plenty of free services and they're user-friendly to set up. But the key is to tie the use of the wiki to something that the members of the organization cannot afford NOT to use. In that case it was tied to the budget and expense reimbursements. If you didn't use the forms provided on the wiki and submit your information via the wiki, then you didn't get the $.
Once people got used to using the wiki for that purpose, then they began to use it for other communication purposes and reduced the flow of e-mail.
Best wishes for herding those cats.