Magic and Pixie Dust
I enjoyed your commentary on your recent trip to Disney World ["First Word," November 1996]. I am eagerly awaiting your analysis in the next issue.
Here at Davenport College in Holland, Michigan, we have developed our own brand of pixie dust. We call it our M.A.G.I.C. for Better Learning Program. The acronym stands for Motivating and Generating Instructional Creativity. Through our commitment to quality, we continuously encourage our faculty and staff to explore new teaching strategies and techniques.
In addition to sending some of our faculty members to Disney University, we have instituted a variety of internal faculty development programs that nurture our creative spirits. Some of these seminars are built around such topics as humor in the classroom, the lively lecture and e-mail discussion groups.
We are proud of the unique contributions that we are making in the field of business education.
More Pixie Dust
Your "First Word" from the November 1996 Quality Digest brought back wonderful memories.
In the summer of 1987, I was in the college program with 499 other college students from across the country and worked at Walt Disney World for three months. I remember in Traditions I and II (corporate training taken the first two days), they kept mentioning "fairy dust" over and over again, and acting like they were sprinkling it over us. And it worked. We wanted to be nice and friendly.
All summer we kept smiling and being nice and doing all the other Disney things, even though the tourists did get to us from time to time. To let us blow off steam away from the guests, the college program directors threw us a "tacky tourist" party about mid-summer.
It was a wonderful summer and an experience I'll never forget. Thanks again for the memory.
Good Rules for Communication
Your communication laws are excellent ["First Word," December 1996]. I will add these details when I use them:
Any
communication must have an explicit action item. That is, a simple,
declarative sentence saying what the sender wants me to start doing,
stop doing or keep doing. FYI (for your information) is acceptable as
an action item because I know I'm not expected to do anything after
receiving the message.
The
only people expected to read the communication are those to whom the
message is sent. People who are cc'd or bcc'd should never be
expected to read it. That means that no action item can be assigned
to a person who is just cc'd or bcc'd.
Written communication should be in this format: a)
Summary of the message, b) Action requested/expected, and c)
Background detail not able to fit in the half-page summary.
Hope you find these additions helpful.
Expanding the Laws of E-Mail
Some thoughts that could be used to expand the laws regarding e-mail: When you write e-mail, there is an illusion of privacy and anonymity. I suspect that this illusion and the ease of use of this medium lead people to write things that they might be more careful about if they were communicating via hard copy.
I believe that a growing number of legal and ethical entanglements will stem from the difference between this perception of privacy and the reality of initiatives such as the Clipper Chip and the ubiquitous ability of system operators to access whatever is generated through a particular system.
There is little doubt that electronic communication systems will continue to grow in use and sophistication, creating a large cultural impact. It will be interesting to observe and help set the quality standards that will become the norm!
