One email is not an adequate effort

"I sent him an email and never heard back."

I had an intern who gave me this excuse when I asked about the lack of progress on a project. I looked at her, and with my most sincere and patient voice, I asked her, "Well, did you try calling him?"

"No, I guess I'll do that."

She rolled her eyes. "People are so stupid sometimes."

It's amazing how many students think that issuing one email is the SUM of the effort they can be expected to put forth when it comes to communication. They will send one email, then throw their hands in the air. "I've tried!"

There are lots of reasons why sending out one email is not a sufficient effort. Many people ignore emails, or check their emails infrequently. Some people read an email, then forget to act on it. Sometimes, if you hit someone with an email at a busy time, they will barely pay attention to it. Then, there are people like me who receive 250 emails a day and have a very hard time acting on each one.

Some people like email, and some don't. Some prefer other methods of communication.

I experience this phenomenon on a regular basis with our customers. I have one customer who refuses to answer a phone call, but I can text her a message and she immediately replies. I have another who simply will not reply to an email, but if I take a piece of paper and write "PLEASE CALL ME! I NEED TO TALK TO YOU FOR 2 MINUTES!" and fax it to her, I'll hear from her within 10 minutes. One of my facilitators is best reached using AOL Instant Messenger.

Now, I could piss and moan about it. But, I download AIM, and now she and I communicate regularly. It's about finding out how your people communicate, and getting the message to them. You need to have multiple approaches until you find what works. Some people respond better to a phone call or voice mail. Some seem to only reply to text messages. Others need a face-to-face communication, with an email reminder.

Some people need a message flown over their house on a banner pulled by a single engine plane. Good luck with them.

Imagine you want to have a committee meeting with short notice. You must reach out to people in multiple ways in order to get people there. Sending one email to people, then whining when you're sitting at the table alone, is not a sign of unmotivated people. It's a sign that you need to work on your communication skills. It's a sign that you need to try a little harder.

When only one person knows the answers

Interesting thing happened in our office today. Our entire communications system went down, and the CAMPUSPEAK world ground to a screeching halt. No email, no voice mail, questionable phone service.

This during one of our busiest sales times. Small crisis, indeed. My staff and I are pretty paralyzed when the Internet goes down.

Everything is back up now – the crisis lasted about two hours. But, what's annoying in hindsight is that we were completely paralyzed because the employee who set up the communication system is no longer here. And, when the crap hit the fan, no one knew what to do.

It's the Mack Truck theory. When only one person has the knowledge, what do you do when that person is suddenly no longer around?

The employee in question left suddenly, and information about the communication system he set up wasn't adequately passed along from outgoing employee to the new one. Everything has worked fine for months, so no one made it a priority to gather the information.

This is such a typical story. It annoys me that I let it happen to my company. I got comfortable with him always knowing the answers, and then he was gone. My bad.

You have to be careful. You might have a very talented officer who sets up a glorious website, or signs a complicated service contract, or creates some database with all of your vital information. When and if that person vanishes, what are you going to do?

Here's the basic advice today: it's not good when all the knowledge about how something works lies in the mind of just one person. Have him or her write down instructions for everything. Have them clue someone else in to how things work. Make this an expectation. When the person complains about it, remind them of the Mack Truck that will hit him this afternoon when he leaves the building.

Today, as we moved a dozen ceiling tiles looking for a hidden router, we were reminded that it's a dangerous thing to simply let one talented person be the sole keeper of knowledge.

Tickets for attendance

I speak to many Greek audiences, and many of the places I speak put sign up sheets in the back of the room for attendees. I am not a fan of sign up sheets.

First, it's easy to sign a couple of names for people who aren't there. Second, people sign in, take a left turn to the rest room, and run away. Third, it causes a huge bottle-neck, because everyone shows up at the last minute, and then you need to start the program 15 minutes late while everyone signs in. This in turn is a penalty for all of those students who bothered to show up on time!

There is a better way, my friends.

All you really care about is how many from each chapter attended. You don't really care WHO attended from each chapter, right?

As each person arrives for the event, give him or her a ticket. You can buy huge rolls of these at any office supply place for next to nothing. People need to be in the room by the start time of the program to get a ticket. Use a different color ticket for each event.

Then, when the program is over and people are leaving the auditorium, they deposit their tickets in large envelopes, boxes, or other containers decorated with their letters. All the Delta Gamma's drop their tickets in the DG envelope. All the Sig Ep's drop there's in the Sigma Phi Epsilon envelope. It takes mere seconds.

Then, you close up the envelopes, and count up the tickets. Do it right then, or do it the next morning. Whatever.

But what if they bring non-members to the program and these individuals drop their tickets to artificially boost the chapter's attendance number? Well, I think that's a good thing. Encouraging chapters to bring guests is a great way to provide some positive PR to your Greek community (particularly if your speaker is really good). Maybe they'll even bring young men or women whom they are trying to recruit. Hooray!

Another advantage of this system is that it forces people to arrive on time (to get their ticket) and to stay for the whole program (or they cannot drop their ticket in the envelope).

If you're feeling really ambitious, you can combine this attendance system with a door prize contest. To do this, simply buy the kind of "two part" ticket rolls that allow the attendee to keep one half and you keep the other half for the door prize bucket.

But, please, stop the sign-in sheet madness.

Yeah, it's a little sad...

Something funny happened after I graduated college. August became a slightly depressing month.

When I was in college, I looked forward to summer jobs wrapping up, and I could feel the excitement building for fraternity recruitment, football games (yes, even at Indiana), and the general thrill of a new year beginning. I missed my friends and couldn't wait to get back to campus.

But, then you graduate, and August just means the end of summer. And, when you work in higher education as I do, it means that it's time to get back to work. Trade in the shorts for the suits. Play time is over.

During the summer, I give my staff half days on Fridays. It's a treat for surviving a very demanding school year, and it encourages my staff to get out and enjoy themselves a little bit more. Take a long weekend... catch a Friday afternoon flight and go somewhere cool. For me, it usually means a long workout, a trip to Costco, and getting my car washed.

Well, today is the final "half day Friday" of our summer, and dammit, it's depressing. Our catalogs are hitting campuses about now, and next week will be a really busy one as people begin arriving back at campuses and booking speakers.

Don't get me wrong -- I love what I do, and I'm really grateful you're booking speakers! But summer ending also means that, soon, I'll be back in that TSA security line and listening to the United Airlines safety announcement. I don't miss those things during the summer.

So, student reader, if you come back to campus a little early, and your advisor seems a tiny bit sad or moody, don't worry. We will snap out of it in a week or two. But cut us a little slack. We're in mourning.

These are the weeks when we will try to grasp a few final evenings with friends, before our evenings are entirely claimed by student organization meetings. Our weekends are about to vanish. Job stress is about to make a dramatic return to our lives. And then will come the moment in which we know that summer is truly over...

No, not Labor Day...

The first alcohol violation of the new year.

Take a deep breath everyone. Here we go.