The first thing that struck me in the articles was “You’re
likely experienced in your field with a few tricks up your sleeve and ideas in
your hat that you’re excited to share.” (Radian6, 2011) I do have things to share at work. Today my first meeting was updating a Wiki
for Employee Engagement and was interesting.
My second meeting was with my peers about a new process for approvals
during purchasing equipment. I had to
leave before the meeting was complete, but we were already 30 minutes over our
scheduled time. My third meeting was
with another group of peers about the same thing! My final meeting of the day included some of
the same people from the earlier meetings and now some management. This meeting also lasted longer than it
should have. A blog might be a good way
to document the process without 25 people spending more than 5 hours in meetings
discussing it!
The community that would be helped from a blog about the
process above has a tool we use called MyServices. This tool encompasses many groups and is the
starting point for many end users from all over the country. There are many people that use this tool as
their primary source of work. All of
these people would appreciate a source of providing feedback other than the
group mailbox that we are told to use.
The people responsible for the mailbox have a bad reputation for
responding, so I don’t think they would be the right people for maintaining the
blog, but there are a lot of people interested in the tool.
Having a calendar of blockpoints and outages for
MyServices would be very beneficial too.
If the change requests that would be included in the blockpoint
information, people would be happy. One
of their programmers takes a lot of time off, maybe if we could have that
posted on the blog, it would be good.
Reference:
Radian6. (2011, November). Four Steps to Creating
Content for a Social Media Community.
Just because I think this is an awesome organization and they should be a part of the groundswell: http://www.specialolympicswashington.org/
My daughter, Stephanie (with the Gold), at the 2012 North Puget Sound Bowling Tournament with her friend Sarah.
Great points! I like the point of having a few tricks up your sleeve about you personal areas of expertise. I found this useful.
ReplyDeleteI like being an expert most of the time. It is a little embarrassing when I say I am a SME of this particular tool!
ReplyDeleteI find people find "change" difficult in my line of work. Therefore using a blog might be foregin to some people. We would have to teaching the team members attending the meetings, how and what a blog is used for and why they would benefit.
ReplyDeleteI've heard about MyServices, do you have a link?
PS how do I spell check here?
Yes, there would be some learning involved in introducing a blog. It was just a thought after so much time in meetings that day! The next day I spent an other hour or so on the same subject. In one of the meetings, I drafted 5 lines of a process to use. I had a chance to use it and it worked just fine! I also confirmed with my manager that the process was correct.
DeleteI will send you the info from work emails. It is only available there.
I don't know how to spell check. At the moment I am relying on my iPad.
Hello Kist1986,
ReplyDeleteI like your ideas of trying to streamline valuable communication within your organization. I don't necessarily agree that blogging is the best tool to convey important information or that it would effectively replace face-to-face communication. It certainly could be a beneficial tool to use as a resource for follow up, such as, posting brainstorming activities, or other follow up posts to initial communication.
Having said this, each organization is differnt and currently people within organizations are spread all across the globe. How would you go about utilizing a blog or getting people to embrace this form of communication within your organization? Have you presented your ideas to your company?
I wouldn't use the blog exclusively! Non of our meetings were face to face, but they were virtual. I find written documentation valuable. I also found that not all affected parties were in all those meetings on Thursday. A blog would give everyone a voice.
DeleteI haven't broached the subject, even within any of my teammates yet. We do have space available, after all, that is our job!