Mirror, Mirror.

In August, WaterCooler Inc. held our always-boisterous offsite meeting in rural Ontario to discuss emerging communication trends and technology. While at “The Farm”, debate got heated, wine was consumed and sleep was somewhat overlooked. Still, it was at this meeting that we first discussed the Fly Pen, MMP and a number of ideas that have kept us energized since. While Around The WaterCooler has allowed us to share a few of these discoveries with you, there are still a number of topics we have yet to mention. Perhaps one of our favourites is a concept that we refer to as The Window and the Mirror.

In a nutshell, this theory proposes that in the electronic age of media personalization, we are losing meaningful perspective. With so much of our information streaming in via opinionated Blogs / RSS Feeds, surprisingly likeminded friends and TV channels like Fox News, biases that may have once been questioned now often remain unchallenged. Today’s technology gives us unparalleled access to information and the ability to understand issues from a number of perspectives. In practice however, too many of us are squandering this opportunity by instead seeking out information that reinforces the opinions we already have. Towards the end of the discussion, one participant nicely summarized the issue: “I see what you’re saying… We used to think of the media as a window, but these days, they’re really much more like a mirror”.

We couldn’t help but see a connection to Business Communications in this discussion. There is increasing chatter among communicators about the importance of Audience and Message Segmentation. This makes sense; not only will certain channels be more appropriate for specific stakeholder groups, but various segments within your organizations will also require differing degrees of information. Still, we think it’s important to apply the lesson learned in The Window and the Mirror. Where we do segment our audiences (or messages), we need to be sure that employees retain the ability to see the issues from another department’s perspective and that they also develop a line-of-sight understanding of why the issues are important to the Organization’s business objectives.

Links:
WaterCooler Inc. Website
Digital Stationery - Around The WaterCooler
Word Choice, Channel Standards and Ontario's "Big Decision" - Around the WaterCooler
The ABC's of RSS - Around the WaterCooler
Fox News Internal Memo - The Huffington Post
Mastering Audience Segmentation Report - Melcrum