11/10/2006

Communicating

There seems to be a lot of energy around communication these days - If you'll all indulge me in a bit of my new-agey stuff for a bit. My DailyOM horoscopes primarily centre around ways to express oneself or listen to others, I am finding myself in interesting conversations, DMc is sparking debate and encouraging a revolution in the way us Canadian TV types interact. It's an interesting time.

Why am I on about this? I've also been thinking a lot about the communication at my workplace, or sad lack thereof. It was brought into pretty clear focus by the sheer amount of information I am noticing is either passed along through rumour and conjecture, conflicting, or just not passed on at all. There was a particular amount of confusion about a holiday - which is just weird. I mean, other places I have worked have generally made it a point to make sure everyone knows what's going on. Big Copier Company was particuarly awesome about this unsurprisingly; even if it's a small message like 'The following people are off this Monday..." or "The Execs will be in the following days this week...", it would still keep everyone in the loop.

(Granted, to accurately tell people when the Execs will be in would require that they maintain a schedule.)

Maybe I'll address this at some point, but I don't see it changing. Email conversations trail off into the ether, unanswered; discussions don't make much sense; nearly everything is a last-minute panic thing. I guess I'll just keep looking for something else.

Job update: Big Media Corp. job is closing Tuesday, so might hear something a few weeks after that. I have applied to be a gossip writer as well, which is like a dream job for me - but I am not sure how magazine work is. When I worked for NOW, it was awesome... but that place is a whole different world.
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2 comments:

ME said...

I find there is a direct correlation between the size of the company and whether or not communication is effective. I left a prodco where our staff was about 15 and nobody ever seemed to know anything they were supposed to. When I worked for a company that had a thousand employees, everyone knew everything. Very strange.

I can totally relate to the holiday thing. I think bigger companies have actual policies and smaller ones have nothing so they make it up as they go along. It never failed at the prodco, the day before the holiday someone would have to pluck up the courage to ask the boss what the deal was and usually he wasn't even aware there was a holiday (saying he was a workaholic was is an understatement). And the whole email trails that go nowhere, I so feel your pain on that one. Our boss was the exec producer and only signing officer in the company and sadly for us, a champion procrastinator. Ergo, nothing ever got done because it was parked at his door waiting for a signature. Oh the happiness I have in not dealing with it anymore ... you have no idea!

I find communication in general is lacking these days. I am trying to resurrect the art of letter or note writing and have set a goal to send out one note a week to someone I haven't been in touch with for a while, sometimes timed around a birthday or holiday, or sometimes just to say hey, hope all's well and I was thinking about you. People seem to really like getting an actual note in the mail, even if it's brief.

Or even just saying hello or thank you to strangers. I've also become a big fan of the random act of kindness after being the happy recipient of one this summer. A total stranger who was in line before me at Petro Canada bought my tank of gas for me ... it was $20. It was very cool. Since then, I've bought strangers coffees at Tim Horton's or put a subway token in for them, that kind of thing. I hope it makes someone's day happy.

5:35 PM
TV Minion said...

I wonder if it has a lot to do with assuming due to the size of the company, that word would travel quickly. Were I to run a place, one of my first thoughts would be to create a system by which any schedules or sick/off time went through reception so there could be a quick email to the office. 'Minion is away today, Execs will be in the office from 1-5 PM'.

I have some idea! It sounds like we work(ed) for similar places.

And I think that's a great goal. I like having tangible communications in hand; it's nice to have cards and letters to hang on to. As for saying hi to people, I do like to do that. I have conversations with people in elevators and stuff regularly. My favourite people to talk to in the city are actually cab drivers. They're generally people with interesting opinions and backgrounds. And they all seem to love Toronto, which is cool.

10:01 AM

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