Snow day communications

For those of us in the New York metro area, yesterday was a snow day. We got 9" in the city but 20" at my home and most activities were delayed or canceled (other than city schools.) How does this relate to this blog you ask? As I was driving into work again this morning, I was thinking about all of the folks that I have worked with over the almost 5 years I have been at St. John's (for those of you who watch Survivor, think that torch walk at the end.)

As I took that walk along my own personal memory lane - long drive, lots of snow - it occurred to me that my relationships with my coworkers have been greatly defined by how we communicate as an institution. In March of 2006 one of the first things that new employees did was to be added to the "Emergency contact list" this was the old school phone chain list that was used to let us know when something (mostly weather) happened that impacted our work day. Each person had a spot in the chain based upon seniority and supervisory responsibility and the chain worked with everyone having a role in it and a sense of responsibility for others. We usually learned about days off etc. early that morning and never before 10 PM the night before as it took a long time and lots of conversations between links in the chain to get the message out.

Fast forward to 2011 - I learned that we had yesterday off through a text message and two pre-recorded voicemails from folks that I have no connections to or with on campus. I learned about it at 3:20 on Tuesday afternoon - more than an hour before the end of the day before the day off. Office morale promptly went up - was like a bonus vacation day was offered. Office productivity stopped. From 3:20 till 4:30 nothing was accomplished while we all talked about the snow day.

So the "old" method was less efficient but created a greater sense of involvement and community. The new method is highly efficient - everyone learned about the news within 5 minutes of the decision being made - but does nothing to create a sense of connection between and within the community. In fact, we spent more than an hour talking about how great it was going to be not being together!

I would suggest that this is something that we need to take into consideration in a lot of our work. How does the communication that we are sending fit into the conversation? Is it efficiently communicating to a large group of folks to the detriment of communicating with them? Are you building networks within the community like the phone chain or creating a group of individuals with common information but nothing in common? The face to face nature of fundraising and charitable support mandates that we work toward the second within a society running toward the first.