Yeah, okay. I understood Sharon's point exactly. Mission accomplished.

Most of the kids in my grammar labs at the community college could write a ranting note like this and get their point across. It's visceral, blunt, immediate, and universal. And yes, a lot of what passes for "communication" could use more of this humanness and, as you say, "attitude."

But Sharon's very short note also had eight or nine distracting errors of usage and punctuation, so let's not put that note on TOO tall a communication pedestal.

And I suppose you would begrudge Williams his punctuation shortage here?

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

We have an office manager that sends out emails similar to Sharon's. It's a hoot. But you bring up an interesting question: Yes, HR, IT, etc., need our help though they don't know it or refuse to acknowledge it, but as Jane states, Sharon's message accomplished its goal. Is there a time where this acceptable?

I'll call your punctuation shortage and raise you one lapidary sentence fragment:

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

--Ezra Pound

But poetry's not what we're talking about, is it?

Susan, yes, that's my point: If corporate communicators sought to control, edit or write all the communications in an organization, the organization would come to a grinding halt. I'm not literary saying Sharon's note is a work of literary genius. But it is a strong and useful piece of communication—the kind of communication that goes on all day every day (not always so successfully) all throughout the organizations whose employee communication we're purportedly—but not even remotely—"managing," or "directing."

Okay, now I see what you were doing in your post: simply celebrating the fact that as human beings we communicate all the time. Communicating is like breathing: we can't NOT do it. If we're on the receiving end, we make do with what we're given, but if we're on the SENDING end, one of the things that defines us "communicators" is that we study and learn and try to make it the best it can possibly be in that specific situation--as did our friends Williams and Pound.

When I worked in a large government agency, I heard almost every day a polite variation of, "You can't possibly oversee all the writing that goes out of this place, so back off." They were right. I couldn't, and I never tried to. My point to THEM was that anything the public, the legislature, or our colleagues in other states read reflected on our entire organization, so they had some choices to make: either hire more good communication specialists to help with more projects, or hold all 1,100 employees' toes to the fire and make them learn how to write, or let things keep going the way they were. Guess which they chose? Most of our main messages were probably understood well enough by the recipients, but did our communication have AUTHORITY? Not always when we needed it to.

True dat, Jane.

Good help wanted ad is the serenity prayer:

A communication director who knows what he or she can control and what he or she can't and has the wisdom to know the difference ....

What I liked best in Sharon's communication was the way she related the personal responsibility for the corporate good. That's pivotal, essential in corporate communications, from my perspective.

I sat in a meeting yesterday with the consultant who is going through all our corporate records, physical and electronic, and helping us to develop a records retention plan that is compliant with current laws and that protects us in the courts. But what I heard in that meeting was a whole lot of "you will no longer be allowed to" and "if people refuse to do their jobs by deleting/discarding/whatever, then they should face the consequences" and the usual punitive stance that upper management takes.

So I started asking questions. For example, the consultant said, regarding emails, "what would you say if I told you that an analysis of the emails that were backed up on the server probably contains 20,000 mentions of the word 'sex'--what would you say to that?" Well, I said, "so what?" How does the mention of the word sex in the obviously non-work-related joke emails that get pushed around, unless there's someone complaining about sexual harrassment, show anything but a poor use of time or some minor poor judgment? Where is the trigger for litigation/castigation/fines in the mere fact that a word exists somewhere? And how will holding a big old hammer cause people to reconsider the emails they send or receive on the corporate system?

What I liked in Sharon's email was that she used a specific example of something (stinky beef) that was a pain point, and representative of the sort of thing we might all be guilty of, and then expanded that to a joint responsibility to be more careful. She didn't say "we'll get rid of the refrigerator if you can't comply with the rules" or otherwise threaten. She just pointed out how this practice negatively affected the workplace, made suggestions about what actions would improve the situation, and left it to the individual to incorporate a new attitude. A little blunt, perhaps, but clear, not threatening, not ridiculous ("your mom doesn't work here"), just plainly stated.

For me that's the essence of effective communication and key to corporate change. So I listened to this consultant--with whom I mostly agree, by the way; we are overrun with over-retention here at my company--and started thinking about how we could present new practices as something that would benefit all of us, and then offer suggestions and policies that would enable people to feel like a vital part of positive change. How can I transform this hammer into a rose?

So there's where Sharon took my thoughts to wandering. And you, David, of course picked my very favorite Williams poem, which improved my morning by its very reading. Thank you.

...Joan

Joan, right on—and I'll bet Sharon will behold the vastness of her own thoughtfulness here for the first time, and be impressed!

Joan, by this—"we are overrun with over-retention here at my company"—you mean to say there's lots of dead wood? I've never heard of that "over-retention" term. What's a firm to do about "over-retention," short of finding all the over-retained losers firing them out the window?

I'm reminded of the NLP presupposition "the meaning of communication is the response you get" - the proof of the pudding's in the eating.

Has the sandwich been removed?

Vic, this is from Sharon:

"Not only was the sandwich removed, the fridge had been wiped down and a fresh box of baking soda, both top and bottom."

'nuff said.

LOL! No, David, we over-retain information in the form of documents, e-mails, electronic files on shared drives/disks/hard drives/etc. We just keep too much stuff. Example: I finally went through my overburdened email the other day and deleted 2000 (yes, that's two thousand) unopened emails. Mailing lists, Ragan emails, vendor emails, news articles, blog posts, etc.--things I mean to get to when I have time and then never make the time to get to. When I finally went through all that stuff, I kept maybe 20 or 30 that I actually wanted to look at to see if they had information I wanted to see, and deleted the rest of that stuff without even opening most of it, because it was either outdated or irrelevant by then. I sorted by "from" and just mass-deleted (everything from certain vendors, or email lists, or whatever).

When you multiply my dreadful email habits by the 500 people who work at this company, that's bad enough. Then you have a look at our shared drives, where I see folders full of documents created or stored by people who haven't worked here for years--but nobody wants to delete that stuff because it *might* be important. So we definitely need to develop some guidelines for getting rid of stuff.

There are all kinds of things this consultant proposed. For example, any opened or sent email that isn't stored in an Outlook folder by Friday of each week will be automatically deleted. That is probably not a bad plan. But until people have had a chance to develop that discipline, it's a little like a trainer telling someone new to the gym that if you haven't worked all the muscle groups by the end of each week, then you get punched really hard in all the places you didn't exercise. I suppose that might be an incentive of a kind, but it's hardly the sort that makes a person feel really good about the situation. Much better to offer training, encouragement and incentives.

So my challenge is, at least in the IT-related parts of this new approach, how to present new processes in a way that encourages people to embrace and take part instead of to feel like their already demanding jobs have just had a whole element of punishment added.

Seriously, if you are told that you have three very high priority projects to complete by times certain, and your salary and prospects for advancement and so forth depend on your performance, and then you're told, "oh by the way, you also have to deal with this new email policy, and don't forget that you may NOT retain a paper document that Finance has a copy of, and you MUST do this and that and so forth and IF YOU DON'T, we'll know that you AREN'T A TEAM PLAYER."

In reality, people probably can incorporate these new processes if they're given time and training and not expected to do it all immediately. If they see the value, or are offered alternatives, or taught how, for example, to direct some sorts of mail into folders immediately (anything from the CEO goes straight to your CEO folder)--which isn't hard to do in Outlook--well, see how different the experience can be? So I want to make sure that we take the time to do that extra work up front that sets the tone for people to embrace and adopt rather than do it because they HAVE to.

I'm blathering... But hey, David, thanks again for the poem. I've reread it at least four times today, a lovely reminder of the value of quiet reflection and humor and how our appetites can overcome us even when we want to look our best in someone else's eyes, and how to keep things in perspective. I love that poem.

What I like about the poem is how immediately the reader does forgive the author, all because he: fully acknowledges the harm he has done—he stole someone's breakfast—and asks for forgiveness—and fully expresses the deliciousness—so sweet and so cold—of what he stole.

Now, have you ever seen, this, by Kenneth Koch:

"Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams"

1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

Those are wonderful! I'll have to have a look at this Mr. Koch. Thank you yet again, David!