On (mis)communication

Reading a district manager's blog post on (mis)communication on our intranet made me think. His point was that although everyone is complaining on being assaulted by too much information, there is not enough communication - or more precisely it does not reach the audience.

Today I have communicated by unstructured means (email, instant messaging, phone) and (semi)structured means (ticketing system, supplier wiki) and I must say that I love the structured way for just that, structure. There is too much unstructured information flying around. Even though IM and email are fine for short term use, IM discussions are just a mess from archival point of view and email... well... there's simply too much of it. From a well structured wiki or a ticketing system you can find the information easily and stay updated on the state of affairs, and they are maybe even easier for the author (no need to think of who should receive the message or to keep references to things said and done earlier).

But blogging, yes, I was going to say something about it... What I find a huge problem at work is to reach the users when I have some instructions or tips to share. The usual way would be to send email to a mailing list, but the same applies to those emails as what is the district manager's grief - the message does not reach the receivee (or at least it does not get fully through). If there is more than one sentence some people stop reading, and if the subject does not immediately feel important to them at that time, they ignore the message (and thus I need to repeat the same things over and over). Besides, passing instructions by email is bad just for the reasons email in general is bad (hard to find anything after some time has passed). Thus, having a blog on the intranet struck me as actually a good media to both share some simple tips and also to notify people on new instructions that might be stored somewhere else. If the blog gained followers, it might even work as a feedback channel for development of new features (or gathering knowledge on what the user base really would like to change). A colleague of mine actually has started a blog of his own on just the same purpose, spreading out the word on current issues and hot user tips.

The downside of adding a blog to the array of the existing communication channels is obvious - one more thing to update (and for the audience one more to follow). And it is a big if whether enough users really bother tinkering with the intranet to actually start following a blog. Then again I think the potential is great enough to take the chance and try it.