© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
I am sitting on a plane in New York waiting to disembark on the 10th August. You may recall this is the day after 20 people wanting to blow up planes to the States were arrested on terrorist charges. Gatwick was chaos and all the ground staff were doing their best, but one thing would have made their lives easier and that is communicating information – even if it was there was nothing new to tell. The departure gate was bombarded by people asking, “when are we boarding?” With regular tannoy announcements to all passengers the majority of questions would have been answered. One word has dominated this month – Communication!
In contrast, we sat on the plane for an extra 7 hours, over and above the 7-hour flight, and didn’t get frustrated. The reason? The regular updates from the pilot saying what was happening, what he was trying to do and what the problems were. When he had no information, he told everyone on the plane just that.
A small point, but when people are anxious, frantic, confused and stressed then the more information the better.
On a completely different scale, my company had a lift break down recently and a part was needed. Initially, signs were put up apologising but giving no real information. We received a few calls and emails asking how long it was going to be out for. On day 2 these signs were changed to tell people when it would be repaired. All of a sudden the calls asking when the lift would be working stopped and my team could get on with managing property.
We recently had an almighty cock up, which occurred thanks to the law of sod. We thought it a good idea to do a mail out to some of our residents with copies of News on the Block to bring it to their attention. The post was weighed on faulty scales and went out 1p light on postage!
Instead of making the delivery and dealing with the problem directly with us, Royal Mail left cards telling residents that an under-paid package was waiting at the post office, asking them to pay and to collect it.
The moment we became aware we had a problem, we had a note hand delivered the same day to everyone’s post box advising them of the situation, apologising and asking them to ignore the post office card.
The result of clear, swift, effective communication averted what could have been a complete disaster. We made sure that the magazines were successfully delivered.
Going back to my trip, the reason for the excessive delays to my flight was that the USA wanted to do checks on each and every passenger before the plane left the UK. How on earth they do that is beyond me, especially when I realise that I hadn’t given them the correct address of where I was staying in New Jersey and no-one even noticed!