Tag: communication

To Blog or Not – that is the question

David HerbertLeave a comment

linda-and-mary-blogger

Dear Linda and Mary (I’ve changed your names)

I was interested by your question, whether to blog or not. I thought I’d use a blog post to respond. It might seem less personal than an email response, or over the desk conversation, but others might be able to eavesdrop on this conversation if I blog in answer to your question. (And that is just one of the advantages of blogging.)

I have hit a brick wall with my blogging recently. I had thought that those who were posting had become more “expert” about their content. That was off-putting and intimidating. That might just have been an excuse I was using because I wasn’t finding the time for blogging (and I didn’t seem to have any inspiration). Here’s a summary of excuses I could have used (and being able to make these links is another advantage of blogging).

But your question has caused me to re-think.

You will notice from blogs you’ve read that there is a lot of learning contained in people’s posts. There is a lot of expertise on technical matters, as, for example, in this post on how to set up a blog (which you may find useful). But then, you really don’t have to be an expert to blog. I regard my blog as a memory bank – a jog for my memory and a way of reflecting on what I notice. It’s a workbench on which I can hammer out a few ideas. They’ll never be finished or finely polished, but I am learning and the blog is a useful place to put some of that learning.

I also don’t see any point in keeping things to myself. I do have a heart for some things and I do have a voice which is not to be kept silent, in spite of my introverted nature. I don’t believe that any of us should hide our light under a bushel (particularly in dark times) and I do believe that we should be sharing what we know in as many ways as we can.

But then, there are people who complain of the noise. They say that there is so much out there – so much noise, but so little sense: so much information but so little wisdom. Probably the same complaint has echoed through human history, from the time we started to talk, to the advent of the postal services, to the current development of online social media (social media is as old as our talk). Unless we use our intelligence to interpret the noise our talk will be babble, our mail will be junk and our conversation meaningless. Blogging is just another way of talking things through together – a way of publishing. Nobody needs to buy into what we have to say – but it is what we have to say, it is our part of the conversation. (I tried working this out in a post I called Chitter-Chatter five years ago – see how I can refer back to what I have done?)

I do have a bit of a problem about how social media fits my work culture. It’s widely seen as a distraction. But if we work by sharing then blogging seems an ideal means to that end.

I would be interested in what you have to say because I know that you are in unique situations and I would love to know what you are making of those situations given your own passions and interests. I won’t promise to keep up with your posts if you do choose to blog though I will click the “follow” button.

It doesn’t really matter to me how many “readers” or followers we have. I think I am the main beneficiary of my own blog because of the opportunity it gives me to do some creative writing, because it gives somewhere to put my stuff, because it helps me work things out of me and because it makes me interesting to me.

Happy blogging
David

PS You might be interested in this no-excuses guide to blogging from Sacha Chua. She suggests that you always start with a question when you blog. So I did. To blog or not to blog – I am grateful that you asked me the question. Why not have a look at Sacha’s blog for some inspiration?

A word in edgeways

David HerbertLeave a comment

blogging

I was blogging, then I wasn’t. Then Euan Semple reminded me of the importance of sharing thoughts and opinions in his book Organisations don’t tweet, people do. He asks: “how does the world ever change except by people sharing their opinions?”

I was preoccupied with business, forgetting that my business is sharing ideas.  My responsibility is to support the (professional) development of ministers, and my mind had flitted from one frame of mind to another – from the frame of mind in which there is organic development through community sharing to the less productive frame of mind governed by the metaphor of the machine. It’s working our way out of one skin into another.

I belong to an organisation that, rightly, takes itself seriously. It cares about risk and dangers – among them the risks involved in social media. Organisations don’t tweet, people do is a powerful argument for overcoming the fear of engagement with social media. One of those reasons is to make the virtual space of the web inhabitable for our children. “If we leave it to the gunslingers and the pornographers it will stay uninhabitable” writes Euan Semple. He continues, “If we want to make it habitable we have to make it so by being in there behaving in productive and positive ways and showing that it can be a tool for good.”

And so it is. I wasn’t blogging, but now I am.

The strapline to the Prologue to John’s Gospel could be “a Word in Edgeways” as John describes Jesus as God’s word “that became flesh and dwelt among us”. It’s important that we get our word in edgeways in as many ways and spaces as possible. None of this is new. Getting our word in edgeways has been a responsibility since we began to use language. Responsible citizens have been using it ever since to name names, to make sense, to work things out, to share opinions and to make peace (and their opposites). There is now a new space for exploration which is the virtual space of the worldwide web. How can we live well there?

The image is from John Sutton’s photostream
Euan Semple’s blog

chitter-chatter

David HerbertLeave a comment

>

This diagram describes the ratio of noise to wisdom and the descending volume and value from noise to wisdom. According to Dee Hock “Noise becomes data when it transcends the purely sensual and has cognititve pattern.
Data becomes information when it can be related to other information in a way that adds meaning.
Information becomes knowledge when it is integrated with other information in a form useful for deciding, acting or composing new knowledge.
Knowledge becomes understanding when related to tother knowledge in a manner useful in conceiving, anticipating, evaluating and judging.
Understanding becomes wisdom when informed by purpose, ethics, principle, memory of the past, and projection into the future.” 

At one end of the spectrum, data is increasingly abundant, whereas wisdom (which is “holistic, subjective, spiritual, conceptual, creative”) seems to becoming scarcer.
 
We watched Lark Rise to Candleford last night. Based on life in bygone Buckingham (Candleford) and Juniper Hill (Lark Rise) the series reflects a time when there seems to have been a far higher ratio of understanding and wisdom to data and information. Wise counsel seems to have been part of being in settled communities slowly facing up to change. The wisdom is captured in the winning entry to last night’s poetry competition:
 
     As I went on my way,
     Gossamer threads span from bush to bush like barricades,
     As I broke through one after another
     I was taken by a childish fear
     They are trying to bind and keep me here
     But as I grew from girl to woman, I knew
     The threads that bind me were more enduring than gossamer.
     They were spun of kinship and love
     Given so freely that it could never be taken away from me. 
 
They were the days before the coming of the railway – a back story of Lark Rise. The coming of the railway meant increased communication, which meant more noise, which meant more data, which meant more information – and before we know it, we are too tired and overwhelmed to process it any further. Now we contemplate rail journeys of  only two hours from London to Glasgow – though wisdom may have gone out the window.
 
I am in the process of exploring the world of Facebook and Twitter. I now have the knowhow – now I am looking for the understanding and the wisdom to discern how to use it. Though there is a lot of noise and chatter going on I think I can now see a point to Twitter – I travel slowly! So I have changed my profile to “Cascading Insight – a dealership in second hand views” – and I am thankful for the tweets of others which have pointed me in the direction of understanding and wisdom. I will not be tweeting about my moods, where I am, and what time I’ve gone to bed. That is definitely too much information and just adds to the volume of noise we haven’t got a hope in hell of managing.

Post-Phone (get it?)

David Herbert1 Comment

I rarely get letters now – apart from leaflets from the local pizzerias. There are days when the phone does not ring. Communication has changed very significantly and rapidly. We have moved from beacon to drum to messenger to post to phone to fax to email to facebook to …. We have moved from moorland track to canals to railtrack to the road to the by-pass to Runway 5. Our horizons have shifted from village to town to Spanish Costas to antipodean holidays and now interplanetary travel plans.

My own journey is from a 35 year ministry in parishes where my business was “to know and be known” to living more anonymously on a housing estate. I have been discovering what most people have long known. That is, that communication is minimal in neighbourhoods. We talk amiably as neighbours – though we don’t see much of one another because working hours are very different. Others are just “passers by”. When we go to the local shops (thank goodness we’ve got some) we pass by one another without recognising one another and realising that the common ground that we share.

Fortunately new communities are being constructed all the time. These are often communities of our own making – virtual communities which offer conviviality and new possibilities for relationship. Unfortunately we feel safer in our Facebook communities than we do in our own street (even though the stats say that crime is lower than it has been for years).

Good Samaritan window at Tarvin Church

Passers-by don’t get a good press in the gospels. The Good Samaritan was the exception to the general rule of passers-by when he went out of his way to help the victim. Peter Shaw, in Conversation Matters, reports on a discussion with Veronica who told him about the short conversations she had (she is a flight attendant). She explained that they were all trained to be cheerful, and to look people in the eye and smile. She was full of stories about conversations she had with footballing stars and leading politicians making the point that what mattered was not who they were, but the way they were. What sort of tone did they adopt? Did they smile? Were they cheerful? Did they say ‘thank you’?

I suppose these sort of short conversations prevent us from being just passers-by of one another. A “thank you” shows we appreciate the other person. A “good morning”  shows we’ve noticed. A “how are you” shows we care. Words get over our boundaries. Maybe communities are only built brick by brick and word by word.

>It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it

David HerbertLeave a comment

>During face-to-face contact, body language and tone of voice determine 85-90% of the impact. That’s the result of research apparently.
There has to be an integrity of what you say and the way that you say it – a bit like the old Fun Boy Three song – “it ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it”.
One of my favourite verses is from Isaiah (chapter 42).

Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.
He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out.

Gentleness, humility, patience are fruits of the Spirit – these fruits are evident in what we say and the way that we say it. Without them we will sound in-credible. What is true of individual communication is also true of organisations. What is the body language of government, our bank, our school/college, our church? What is its tone of voice?
Reviewing a book by Stephen Denning on Amazon, Robert Morris points to Howard Gardner’s book Five Minds for the Future, in which Gardner suggests that, to thrive in the world during eras to come, there are five cognitive abilities that need to be developed. Gardner refers to them as “minds” but they are really mindsets.

1. The disciplined mind enables us to know how to work steadily over time to improve skill and understanding;
2. The synthesizing mind enables us to take information from disparate sources and make sense of it by understanding and evaluating that information objectively;
3. By building on discipline and synthesis, the creating mind enables us to break new ground;
4. By “recognizing that nowadays one can no longer remain within one’s shell or one’s home territory,” the respectful mind enables us to note and welcome differences between human individuals and between human groups so as to understand them and work effectively with them;
5. and finally, “proceeding on a level more abstract than the respectful mind,” the ethical mind to reflect on the nature of one’s work and the needs and desires of the society in which one lives

>It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it

David HerbertLeave a comment

>During face-to-face contact, body language and tone of voice determine 85-90% of the impact. That’s the result of research apparently.
There has to be an integrity of what you say and the way that you say it – a bit like the old Fun Boy Three song – “it ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it”.
One of my favourite verses is from Isaiah (chapter 42).

Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.
He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out.

Gentleness, humility, patience are fruits of the Spirit – these fruits are evident in what we say and the way that we say it. Without them we will sound in-credible. What is true of individual communication is also true of organisations. What is the body language of government, our bank, our school/college, our church? What is its tone of voice?
Reviewing a book by Stephen Denning on Amazon, Robert Morris points to Howard Gardner’s book Five Minds for the Future, in which Gardner suggests that, to thrive in the world during eras to come, there are five cognitive abilities that need to be developed. Gardner refers to them as “minds” but they are really mindsets.

1. The disciplined mind enables us to know how to work steadily over time to improve skill and understanding;
2. The synthesizing mind enables us to take information from disparate sources and make sense of it by understanding and evaluating that information objectively;
3. By building on discipline and synthesis, the creating mind enables us to break new ground;
4. By “recognizing that nowadays one can no longer remain within one’s shell or one’s home territory,” the respectful mind enables us to note and welcome differences between human individuals and between human groups so as to understand them and work effectively with them;
5. and finally, “proceeding on a level more abstract than the respectful mind,” the ethical mind to reflect on the nature of one’s work and the needs and desires of the society in which one lives

>More words

David HerbertLeave a comment

>With emails, weekly newsletters, sermons, magazine articles mouth and keyboard are in overdrive on communications. I wonder what coomes over. It’s intriguing to have someone play back what I’ve said often with a completely different interpretation of what I have meant to say. Sometimes that means I’ve not expressed myself very clearly, and sometimes it means that the reader or listener has focussed clearly – but their minds might have gone in a different direction altogether. That’s OK. Often what people come back with is far more interesting than the original version.
Of course, we can say too much. Woodrow Wilson said “If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.”
This song by Boney M is the prayer that ends Psalm 19. A catchy number which doesn’t capture the desolation of the exiles by the Rivers of Babylon who couldn’t bring themselves to sing in a strange land. Oh well.

http://www.youtube.com/get_player