KnowHR Blog - Latest Comments in Communicate…Then Wait

Re: Communicate…Then Wait

JT — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:57:20 -0000

BTW - Frank and his firm iFractal are the house communications for me and my company.

Re: Communicate…Then Wait

Frank Roche — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:41:32 -0000

JT, you know what's killer? When a comment is better than the post. What a freakin' great story.

HR Wench, ain't it the truth? Taking a little cleansing breath helps. And if you're JT, so does chutzpah.

Scott, great metaphor.

Folks, I'm dazzled by this set of comments. Amazing.

Re: Communicate…Then Wait

HR Wench — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:36:06 -0000

This post totally validates my PAIN!! I go through this with the president of my company all the time. He will see the initial reaction from a few whiners regarding an HR communication and totally panic. I have to calm him down and convince him to wait it out a bit. It takes a few days for him to figure out the sky isn't falling and most employees are on board with the announcement. I think this is why he says to me "you're a pain in the @ss, but I need you". I'd like to think he really means HR can be a pain, not me personally, but who knows.

Re: Communicate…Then Wait

JT — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:54:18 -0000

Great advice. Two thoughts from me.

This reminds me of one of my two or three favorite quotes. It is from the Buddha. A common command of course, especially from parents and managers is "don't just stand there, DO something!" The Buddha teaches - "don't just do something, stand there."

Second thought is a time when I took the advice of Frank and Buddha. We put out some communication about benefits and pay, intended to hit an hourly workforce and use some humor. The materials included the line, "[N]obody says, 'got to use my disability beneift - YEAH!'" The point was that everybody likes more pay, but we don't always "like" the value in our benefits.

After printing 90,000 copies of this thing, the president of the company asked me at a meeting of our "executive committee" about the piece, he picked it up and happened upon the "diability" line. He slowly looked up and asked me, non-rhetorically, if I was crazy. My only response was to ask him if he thought he would: 1. read the next line and 2. ever forget this benefit statement among the many that he had read. The only additional response on my part was silence.

That was this past fall. As of Friday, I still had a job there.

Re: Communicate…Then Wait

Scott McArthur — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:39:15 -0000

Nice idea. It's a bit like planting a seed one day and digging it up the next day to see if it has grown!