When a decision has to be made, it’s the “gray areas” that mess us up. – SCN Encourager

In the school biz, we often have to make difficult judgement calls.

And when to close down our schools due to the weather is one of them.

Sometimes, though, we luck out and the reality of the situation is obvious.

Dang, I like it when that happens!

The speed and quality of my decisions consistently score off the charts when all of the influencing factors are obvious.*

But often it’s not always easy for us to discern – despite all of the information available online – which way things are trending.

And getting ahead of what’s coming our way (or may come…) is a big part of the good-decision-making equation.

But frequently, there are no facts or trends to rely on.

We must rely on our own experiences with our students, staff, and parents, and trust that our instincts alone will enable us to make a speedy-kwik call.

For example, I saw this infographic recently on Twitter.

It was made and publicized by a major company.

Imagine if one of your 7th grade graphic design classes created it.

Now, I’m all for the pursuit of happiness and having science recommend the various paths to it, but every school communicator I know would be waving the yellow flag of caution and explaiming, “Uh, Houston, we’ve got a problem with this infographic.”

Yikes!

We’d all be clamoring for a re-location of the green “family and friends” megaphone before it ever got shared, printed, and displayed on school hallways and bulletin boards.

Of course, I realize that in the real-world we operate in, this infographic probably wouldn’t have come to our attention at all until it was already up in public and people were commenting about it on the district Facebook page.

This is just one of our common realities.

Not everything in our schools can be anticipated, prevented, or modified ahead of time.

HubSpot – a pretty cool online marketing firm – believes that this reality is especially true for every communicator who sends out emails.

After all, all of our emails once we hit send cannot be altered or changed, either.

So, HubSpot has put together this helpful slideshare.

It offers 64 word mistakes that commonly crush our credibility.

Although they missed more than 40 other ways I commonly crush my credibility, their slideshare still deserves a place in the “good stuff” category.

* And in a full disclaimer, Cindy wants to know what decision-making “chart” I’m referring to. She’s seen some of my decisions at home when the facts “were obvious” – and she thinks I’m inflating my score!

Like I said, it’s our “gray areas” that can mess us up.