andrewcareaga

Resolution for 2012: cut the communication clutter

Leave it to the Onion‘s funny folks to get a serious point across about how poorly some of us communicate.

I’m referring to this recent bit of satire about our commander in chief’s communication style:

In Major Gaffe, Obama Forgets To Dumb It Down

CINCINNATI—In a serious miscalculation that may prove devastating to his bid for a second term, President Barack Obama neglected Tuesday to simplify a statement to the point where it could readily be grasped by anyone with the vocabulary of an 8-year-old.

“Instead of saying, ‘There are many global variables at work here, and unless they all fall into place, we could find ourselves back in a recession,’ he should have just said, ‘Times are hard. We gotta be strong,'” said Washington Post political correspondent Brian Meltzer, noting that Obama’s statement during a speech on job creation was met with dumbfounded looks and audible gasps from the crowd.

“Americans are so used to meaningless homespun homilies, they don’t know what to do when they’re treated like thinking adults. The president has to understand that if he goes out there throwing around words like ‘currency’ and ‘economy,’ he’ll end up being branded an elitist.” In an attempt to correct the error, Obama concluded his speech with the words “Jobs good. No jobs bad. God bless America.”

Obama isn’t the only one with a communications problem. Leaders of many organizations — from CEOs to college and university leaders — have a hard time communicating clearly. That’s because the world of business, education and technology thrives on obfuscation and tossing about empty buzzwords.

I recently attended a meeting where the speaker, introduced as “a good communicator,” talked about what he planned to do “on a go-forward basis.” What does that even mean? I think he was talking about his plans for the future, but I’m not entirely sure.

And then a couple of weeks ago I was editing a document on our campus when I came across this doozie:

Resources have been allocated to incentivize faculty members to convert their face-to-face lectures to lectures delivered by electronic media utilizing the internet.

I revised that slightly to read:

We have made funds available to encourage faculty members to deliver their courses online.

I’m not sure if my recommendation was adopted in the final version. But I will assure you this:

~~On a go-forward basis~~ In the future, I will ~~incentivize myself~~ try to cut the clutter from my communication.

Friday Five: Virginia Tech

Note: This is not the typical Friday Five. That is, this post is not formatted in typical fashion. There are not five interesting links in a bulleted list below. After what happened at Virginia Tech on Thursday, I don’t even want to think about bullets. Not even on a blog. – AC

Thursday’s shooting incident at Virginia Tech, in which a campus police officer was killed by a gunman, brought thoughts of “not again” to the minds of many in the higher ed community. Comparisons to the April 2007 massacre on that campus were unavoidable for many of us as we watched the situation unfold from afar on our Twitter streams and other social networks.

“That campus just can’t catch a break,” was one statement I read from a higher ed colleague on another campus. As though shooting incidents at Virginia Tech were commonplace, or that the two incidents, separated by more than 4 1/2 years, were somehow related.

I guess that’s how our minds work. We tend to look for patterns or trends, even in the absence of no patterns or trends. One Washington Post columnist this morning even called Thursday’s incident evidence of an “unshakeable curse” for the campus.

A little perspective, please?

Yes, the murder of Virginia Tech police officer Deriek W. Crouse is sickening and heartbreaking. There is no doubt. He was only 39, and he left behind a wife, five children and stepchildren, and many, many friends and loved ones. But to connect Thursday’s incident to the 2007 massacre of 32 people is more than unfair. It is unfair to Virginia Tech, to Officer Crouse and to the families of those 32 who died in 2007.

* * *

Today, many of us began our mornings by scanning media reports and analyses to see what lessons we can draw from Thursday’s incident. The big question on our minds — Did Virginia Tech’s mass notification warning system work? — seems to have been answered. It did. Thank goodness, it did.

The incident was “a test like no other” of the campus’s new emergency alert system, as the Chronicle of Higher Education reported this morning. (Thanks to Karine Joly for pointing this out to me this morning.)

And yet, I worry about our campuses and the false sense of security many of us have, post-Virginia Tech massacre, that a mass notification system and “secure in place” measures will protect us from someone who is intent on doing harm.