This morning in the Wall Street Journal[1] I read that GM is going to restate results for 2001, and possibly, subsequent years. I then clicked over to the FastLane blog to read GM’s take on the issue and found … nothing. Nothing yet, at least, and I’ll be interested to see if Lutz or others offer an account on the site.
What’s more, I notice there’s not much at all happening at FastLane these days. There are only three posts on the front page, and only five over the past six weeks or so. (compared to eight in May and 11 in June).
When FastLane debuted most new media observers credited the site with being the "right" way for a big company to publish an external blog: posts by senior leaders, not highly spun by the PR group, and a mix of marketing flogs and candid takes on the company.
Now, though, I wonder if the site’s losing its steam. We lose steam at CommLog from time to time, but we also don’t widely promote CommLog as a portal into our firm. If anything it’s a mix of hobby for us and service for clients, with any branding benefits a plus.
Is FastLane becoming SlowLane? We’ll see, but the announcement of earnings restatement is exactly what a company using blogs in the "right" way would use a blog for: to offer an authentic, not-press-release take on the issue to supplement their other communication efforts.
We’ll see if they do.
- Subscription only; here’s a link to Reuters’ story.
This post at 43 Folders, in which Merlin Mann asks "how many actionable emails do you get each day?" (he also has a poll up), prompted me to post this comment:
I get plenty; they’re nearly all actionable. That said, I (and the folks in our firm) receive significantly less that our peers in other organizations, and certainly less than our clients.
Why?
1) We put “pull” information where it belongs: On the web. The core of our intranet is a blog, which we use to post any information that would otherwise find its way into an email distribution. If someone’s hosting lunch at Chili’s for Suzie from AR’s birthday or there are Dunkin’ minis in the break room, you need to check the blog to know. And if you miss something important because you don’t read the blog, you’re accountable for the miss.
2) We do a good job of matching message to media based on the principles of “media richness.” (Read more about media richness here). The result is that we spend more time in face-to-face or telephone conversation, which is more efficient than email for a whole range of topics.
Works for us, and thanks to the liberal use of David Allen’s Getting Things Done Outlook add-in across our firm, we nearly all go to bed each night with our inbox an empty box.
One of the reasons our IC practice has pushed blogs so hard with clients isn’t because we have a high level of latent geekiness (well, not all of us). It’s because one of their benefits is a significant reduction in email traffic. Over the three years that blogs have been the foundation of the CRA Intranet, employees have become wonderfully conditioned to (1) post anything there that’s of interest to the group, rather than emailing it, and (2) check there on a regular basis.
As a result, nearly any internal email we get is either one-to-one or one-to-few.
As to media richness, certainly go read the CommLog post I linked to in the comment above and download its primer (it’s a PDF file). When I speak about communication, especially to leaders, I hammer the point of media richness: the more uncertain, strategic, persuasive, or relationally important a topic is, the more it requires media closer to face-to-face conversation.[1]
"Uncertain" involves a lot of daily business discourse, but it typically doesn’t mean "earth-shaking uncertainty." Indeed, most of these conversations are routine. Trying to set a meeting time among three people is a routine task. It also involves a large amount of uncertainty, which is why it’s so difficult to do via email–the feedback channel for the medium has significantly greater lag than that of a telephone conversation.
We overuse email because it’s in front of us and it’s cost-efficient. But getting off your keyboard and on the phone, or face-to-face, often produces faster and better results.
- More on these issues here.
Conflict is a necessary evil. When used correctly and depending on the attitudes and perspectives of those involved, conflict can:
* Diffuse a more serious conflict.
* Spark an urge to search for more facts or solutions.
* Increase group performance and cohesion.
* Find where you stand on a particular topic.
So how do you get to a spot where conflict can influence and help facilitate these positive outcomes?
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