Hmmm.
My jolly nice biology teacher (herein referred to as JNBT*) mentioned today that, for reasons best understood by marketing people who have only just found the
internet, the college I go to wants their staff to attend meetings via Twitter. Oddly this isn’t the first time I’ve heard something along these lines. Though the places I’d heard of coming up with this use of so-shul meeja* previously were firmly footed in the corporate world.
JNBT seemed mostly concerned that it’d be quite easy for students to listen in to meetings. I think his concern is in the wrong place.
I think the bigger thing to be concerned about is having employers who don’t actually want to take the time to have meetings with staff in person. Being multi-site is not really an excuse unless your multi-site means China, Canada and Belgium.
I love twitter it is a fantastic platform, but it, like facebook, like this, like text messages, shouldn’t be a replacement for actual human contact. Particularly not with the people you employ. Especially in a business that is so based on real life communication*.
I am biased, I admit. Having worked for a big organisation where those who make the ultimate decisions rarely see those who are subjected to such decisions I am unashamedly opposed to distance management. If you don’t see the people it makes it easier to consider them as skilled (or not) commodities, and commodities don’t need regard when it comes to making economic decisions. A low level version of my most hated phrase from modern warfare “collateral damage”.
So-shul meeja engagement is all very well and good, but if you don’t engage people in person as people, rather than a collection of keystrokes, how do you actually know them? If you’re envisaging having to make brutal economic decisions then perhaps it makes sense to have units rather than staff, but I can’t imagine how you’re going to learn how your business is really doing.
I’m a geeky girl, I make no apologies. I spend more of my life at my keyboard than most people I know, but even I know that you can’t have a proper conversation (which is frankly what a meeting should be-an organised conversation-but a conversation) over 140 characters.
In other news. Who took my appetite? It vanished when my arrhythmias came back. I’ve eaten barely anything today and I feel stuffed (and no not in that way).
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*I was going to initial him as nice biology man, but realised that runs close to Z’s NBD.
(Oh and also, since JNBT knows where this blog lives if you comment please keep that in mind…)
*I’m not putting the proper spelling in because I want to ( I came up with three justifications and concluded, fuck it, I just like spelling it like that).
*Distance learning is great but it isn’t for me, I need an actual real life human being in the room with me explaining stuff. Emailed questions, and phoned tutorials are little use to me if I’ve not met the person and so don’t have a feel for the way they communicate. eg, sarcasm does travel over email if you actually know the person sending it.
