THE BREAKFAST TABLE AT 6AM — My young son is reading his school book aloud. To practice. I am pretending to listen.
“What!?” he says suddenly. “Rescue a cat from a tree? Firemen don’t do that, do they?”
I sense disappointment.
“Yes,” I reply. “But only for old ladies in cartoons and movies.”
“OK,” he says, as if I had given him a good answer.
So, how many cats have you rescued today? How many things have you done that weren’t really what you were meant to be doing?
Here are a few things that communication people are asked to do that may not be the best use of their time…
• Dress up someone’s PowerPoint presentation
• Organise non-business focused events
• Go to meetings where you are not required
• Write other people’s emails
• Proof-read
What have I missed? From today, how about not answering the call to get the cat from the tree?
Communication is an essential service. Helping your organisation achieve its business goals is a full time job. Let’s focus on that.
/df
P.S. No animals were or will be hurt in implementing this plan.
One abstract thought David: the cat in your picture doesn’t look like it needs to be or wants to be rescued! So I’d urge you to answer the call and ask the caller WHY?
I find myself increasingly rescuing half-dead rodents from cats, but I think that’s unrelated.
I recently calculated that I spend a frustrating large portion of my time proof-reading and editing people’s communications – emails or blogs mostly. Just finished one now. There’s a graphic designer in the team who gets to do the dressing up … It’s fascinating I appear to be the only one who understands sentences and paragraphs and can spot an errant apostrophe. But happily the events I organized have all been business-focused. And I’m only prepared to go to meetings that are relevant to my work and serve expensive pastries.