Communication:

The variety and speed of change is bewildering for most of us. We all love our new phones and texting has given us a level of immediacy that is addictive. The new challenge as I view it is in management. How do we use these tools to be more effective and efficient?

There are several tools that I believe could dramatically improve group communication efficiency but seem to, in my experience, difficult to implement.  The first is the use of wikis and the other is shared documents. Though many of the individuals that I work with seem to understand the possible benefits, we as a group seem slow to adopt these strategies. The problem seems that we fall back on to the tools we know, email.  I suspect that the very rate of  change and the constant development of new tools makes us all leary of investing the effort in learning how to use a tool that changes constantly and may be obsolete tomorrow. These are valid criticisms as my own recent experiences have prove with implementing the use of Google tools in our program.
The criticism of constant  change is valid. Google has changed the access and applications of shared documents, video chat, and wiki access several times in the last six months.  Now dedicated users see these changes as improvements but occasional users  view this as caious and obstructive. A valid criticism.

As I see it we as managers and developers must choose our implementation strategies wisely and developers must continue the quest to make access and use seamless and friendly. A major step forward would be developing universal access security coding as no one can remember effectively the dozens of access codes and passwords required with aggressive computer use.

Managers will not only need to be aware and implement these new strategies but they must be leaders in their use. It is not enough to make policy and have students or new employees use these tools, managers need to lead by example.