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Observations On On-The-Job Communication

• Often the hardest problem in communication is not the conveying of the information, but thinking about the fact that the information needs to be conveyed at all. People often seem to get focussed on what they are doing, and just not to realize that person X should be informed about information Y. This is exacerbated by the fact that communication often uses a lot of valuable time, and that is not what people (except managers) usually consider to be what they are being "paid for"; and also that...

• Too much information is frequently as bad as not enough. (Think I'm doing that now? Click here.) People often won't read it, or get bored listening and tune out. When I was at GE, I spent a significant while writing up my serial communications package in all the detail I could, so that all the people who needed to use it would understand it, and be able to use it and give me feedback. I later found out that very few people actually read through it at all, because it contained more information than they needed. Striking the right balance between enough information and too much is very difficult - the reason why "meetings", which should be a key element in holding things together, are often such a source of boredom.

• Special care must be taken when communicating technical material. There are many hazards, the most common being that one person wants to talk while the other person really needs to think. Listening, you need to be able to request that the other person pause so that you can absorb the information, or ask that the information be repeated so that you can be sure that you understand. As the speaker, you need to realize that just because you said it, it doesn't mean it came across, even if you put it across well. Even when both the speaker and the listener are experts, and pretty brilliant, and good communicators, pauses may be required. Even worse, after losing one concept, the listener will often be completely lost. Many people seem to be too afraid of seeming ignorant or stupid to ask a speaker to repeat themself, or even to slow down -- they would rather risk getting lost, even in a one-on-one setting. This is just plain not useful.

  Another, seemingly simple, thing that I have noticed is that there is a great tendency in technical language to use acronyms, and other lingo that the listener may not know. There is often so much, and so specific to a very narrow field of expertise, that even a knowledgeable person may miss a TLA or two. (That's "Three Letter Acronym".) I have taken to actively (and instantly!) stopping people as soon as they use a term that I don't know, and asking them to explain it. My friends say that it takes a little getting used to, but actually works much better (at least one of them has made a habit of it as well). On the speaking side, I always try to be very careful in my use of terminology, and often make sure that the person I'm talking to knows the terms I'm using. As long as they do, lingo can be a great shortcut tool - but it's impossible to follow a sentence if you don't know what its noun or its verb means. (Have any suggestions? My toves seem to be gimbling in the wrong wabe again...)