Notes from HUB: Communications Group
January 6, 2015
Approval of Scope and Vision
● We want to be innovative and creative.
● Add communication to values
Plan for assessing current communications
● Reviewed the methods for gathering information.
● Written surveys may be incomplete without a focus group.
● Are there local organizations/groups that can help us with a model for this type of assessment? Is there a template that we can buy that can help us?
○ The consultant can help us ask the right questions. They can help us identify the gaps and issues.
● What is that we want to know? Who? When? and Why?
● Focus groups may be more useful. The SEC usually have the same people responding to their surveys.
● They carve out time in a meeting for people to fill out a survey.
● The General Staff Meetings breakout sessions were effective.
● Fred said he had gotten great feedback from small focus groups a few years ago.
● We could do breakfast meetings to receive feedback. It is a safe, casual, non confrontational focus group.
● People like to chat in small groups. Once they start talking, they enjoy it.
● The breakout groups are really successful. Everyone is together, they are doing it together. They bring different constituents from across the campus.
○ Unless we went out the way to invite people, they might not come.
○ Personal invitations make people feel special.
○ Ask the invitee to bring a friend with them to the discussion.
● Multi-Prong approach might demonstrate the committee’s commitment to diversity.
● Could we use constant contact data to provide insight into what emails are being read?
● Provide prompts and questions beforehand, so that introverts can submit feedback as well.
● We can prompt them to provide insight about yourself and colleagues.
● We may need to customize the surveys to the appropriate audience.
● We will need to research what is available.
○ We have a two week time period to do research to see what is out there.
○ Cedric will participate in a group
○ Mike is interested in researching how diversity might inform the questionaire
● The focus groups might inform the questionnaire. We need to take a step back and look at our plan because we might want to do a questionnaire later.
● We have about 6 meetings left.
● We can have two tracks working simultaneously.
● We considered checking in informally with our departments.
● The questionaire should be specific when we get to the survey.
● Is there a way to determine people’s responsibilities regarding communication.
● We should also check the perceptions regarding communication.
● We might be able to have informal conversation to guide us.
● We need to look at our scope
● There is a difference between passive and active communication. When people say communication isn’t good: what are they saying? Do they know where to get the information?
● There is also communication regarding decisions. Do people know why decisions are made? Who should be a part of the decision?
● How does the division’s culture affect the communication?
● How do we prepare the campus for the various interactions we are looking to.
○ Do we want to use the staff meeting to prepare people?
○ Do we need a catchy phrase to get people’s attention?
● Can we create an issues tree?
● We need to make sure that we are hitting the right points
● Could we engage methods used by artist to allow people to provide feedback across campus? Chalkboard plywood.
● Could we engage Mike W. into the conversation?
● Could we have informal conversations with people around us? Share those with the group. Those would inform us on the 5-7 questions to ask the Staff. We could ask the staff to engage in conversation.
○ These will allow us to create a questionnaire/survey for staff.
● We need to check in with the students and faculty.
● We need quality across all constituencies.
● Between now and our next meeting, Karol should develop some questions as they are appropriate for students.
● Katie could do the same with faculty.
● Informal conversations: What are we discussing?
● Could we get examples? This could provide insight about vehicle and perspectives.
Possible Questions for Informal Conversation:
● Give an example of a good communication experience at MICA? Why did it work?
● Give an example of an example of communication failure at MICA? Why was it a failure from your perspective?
● Tell me about a time where there was more of a need for two way communication?
● How would you like to participate in decision making?
Are we sending out a memo to the entire campus?
We need to organize the staff meeting.
Next Steps:
● We will have informal conversations. We will use the questions so that we can have some continuity. We will share responses with the group via a google doc. Karol will create a Google Doc. Deadline: January 16
Questions for Informal Conversation:
● Give an example of a good communication experience at MICA? Why did it work?
● Give an example of an example of communication failure at MICA? Why was it a failure from your perspective?
● Tell me about a time where there was more of a need for two way communication?
● How would you like to participate in decision making?
● The response to the informal conversations will inform the questions.
● We should send out a memo to the entire campus by letting them know that we are engaging in informal conversations in preparation for more formal discussions. (Tom is going to work on this between now and next month. So we can look at it at our February meeting).
● Between now and the next two weeks, Cedric and Mike will look at best practices.
● Staff
○ On Feb. 11, we will have breakout sessions at the February General Staff meeting.
○ We could invite faculty to the breakout sessions.
● Faculty
○ Ray is going to check in with Jan, Gwynne, and Karen to see if there is a place to have breakout sessions with Faculty.
○ Katie is going to see if they would be able to have breakout sessions as a part of Faculty Assembly.
● Students
○ We will need to be creative on how to reach students, since they will not be all gathered at the same time.