Tag Archives: people

Thoughts

It’s about people

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I generally advocate for communication tools that reach a targeted audience, or as large a number of people as possible – shotgun communications sort of thing, where you try to hit everything in sight.

That’s my job.

Over the years, I have developed and created tools that seek to do just that, be they press releases, internet sites, intranet site, and a pile of other tools.

But there are instances where leaders need to stop depending on their communications people to get a message across. Sometimes, you need to just stop and talk to people and tell them what a great job they are doing. Or just say hello.

It’s like having a target audience of one person. Just one, face to face, no phones or intranets, no memos (do people still use memos?) nor instant messaging, Skype or anything. Just two people, speaking.

You’d think this was as obvious as boneless bananas, but apparently it isn’t.

Like when a colleague was looking unhappy, and it transpired that she had done a great deal of work and believed that nobody noticed. But they did, only nobody bothered to tell her.

I mentioned that her work was appreciated and somebody said that she had sorted out an area in her department that was a huge mess before she had arrived. Her face lit up, and then she opened up to me on how she was feeling sad because she had done a lot of work and felt unappreciated.

Sometimes, we communicate the big things and forget the small. Only the small can have a far larger impact in both the short and long run.

Communications isn’t just about intranet articles, press releases, yammer posts, and fancy events – it’s about people.

Thoughts

Knowing me, knowing you

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I find it incredible that after 10 years living in my little village, I know nearly nobody. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, really, but it still hit me like a ton of bricks just the other day.

We went to a village event and when I walked in the hall, I looked around and saw a sea of faces I didn’t recognise, save a handful who could easily be counted on one hand (with a few fingers to spare).

Admittedly, I haven’t made much of an effort over the past few years. One reason is that I found, in the first years here, it was very hard to really fit in with a group that has been slowly and patiently forming over many years and generations. It was like flogging a dead horse.

Integration is not that simple when people insist you speak their language (sic) but then laugh at your pronunciation, pretend they don’t understand or look at you as if you killed their cat. It’s the same folk who return your Grüezi (traditionally, in Swiss villages, you use this greeting in the street, even to people you don’t know) with blank stares or just ignore you outright, but then berate you (privately, of course, but it’s a village so word travels fast) when you don’t say Grüezi. Really, I’m not kidding.

It’s not like that everywhere in Switzerland, and to paint the entire population with the same brush would be unfair.

It would be tantamount to calling all Maltese xenophobes because of the few (but growing number of) people who object to the presence of immigrants on the Rock.

It would be good if these people – generally middle class white folk like me who are not normally targetted – are on the receiving end for once. They’d learn a hell of a lot from the experience.