Professor Elam

We are studying successful communication strategies in EDAD 5610. One way to do this is to analyze communication breakdowns.  Handily there is no shortage of such failures, oddly few learn from them as these recent examples illustrate. Our two examples here are

Hugo Montegegro,  Now the former Arlington ISD Superintendent

John Lilley, Now the former Baylor University President

Hugo Montenegro  was apparently determined to earn outside speaking fees. Despite his annual salary of $270,000, he sought and received oputside fees in the amount of $14,000, about 5% of his salary.   And remember at his salary level he will by paying about one third of those fees in taxes anyway!   He ignored communications from his own attorney and made it clear he wanted to engage in such practices from the get go.  I am not sure where poilicy, ethics, and communication cross from one to the other but we know that Hugo managed to cross all three. Click and read the article for class Monday.

John Lilley reminds me of the statement that Taft made after engineering the worst loss his party ever suffered, “I cannot imagine how I could have done anything different!.”  Once again, Carnegie’s lessons can serve us well.  It appears that Lilley failed to build a consensus, to say the least.  Click and read the article for class Monday.

As you read the articles think about what we have learned about Total Quality Management and the psychology of dealing with people that might have prevented these incidents from occurring. My purpose of course is to insure that you make the connection so that these things do not happen to you!