It’s your fault when you don’t answer email.
It’s your fault when you require phone calls in order to advance the conversation.
It’s your fault when you don’t check in with the social networks that collaboration is happening within.
It’s your fault when the people that talk to you don’t talk to anyone else outside of your sphere of influence.
It’s your fault when everyone is taking different notes during the meeting and has separate expectations about what was decided.
It’s your fault when you assume that everyone is against you.
It’s your fault when the most sophisticated communication you can manage are short messages from your cell phone.
It’s your fault when the most current information you have is in a manilla folder.
It’s your fault when every decision has to be made in a meeting of no fewer than 6 people.
Your workflow is your own fault. If you never clean up your email or get beyond your daily schedule, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you cannot filter information and make meaning out of it, your literacies are off.
We live in a plural society, in every sense of the word. Everything is we and ours and us, and any mistaken identity placed in open records acts worries misses the point. Everything is open. All communication is public. As much as deals are dealt in back rooms, progress happens in the open.
Embrace it. Learn to save things in digital formats. Format things for continuous learning. Be aware of the context that we inhabit. Power plays and handouts are short sided. The truly lasting work is found in sharing and archiving and hyperlinking. It is what will be remembered. It is what will outlast these conversations and this time. Pursue that. Be proactive. Live for unearthing what is possible.
Because being busy pales in comparison. Always.
