Ask any manager to list their biggest challenges and ‘communication’ will be somewhere in the top five. Ask them for a solution and they’ll say what’s needed is more communication, more often. But my guess is there’s already too much communication – that doesn’t work.
Communication is whatever you do to transmit information, thoughts and ideas from one mind to another, something you do to create a specific change in behaviour, attitude or mindset.
It’s that last part that really matters; we communicate for a particular reason, or at least, we should. But a lot of the communication that clogs everything from the inbox to the letter box seems to have been generated without any special purpose in mind.
When I worked in the communications business (back in the last century) my clients would say ‘We need a video’ or ‘We want a conference’ or ‘We want one of them new-fangled web-site thingys that the kids are into these days’. They’d turn up with their brief, ready to answer any question, except The Big One: Why?
People get so excited about the medium (‘Hey, let’s make an app!’) that they skip all the tedious questions about the audience we’re trying to reach, the messages we’re trying to convey or the result we’re trying to achieve and go straight to the sexy business of sound, colour and movement.
Think of that last powerpoint presentation you just saw. Five different fonts in six different colours, some clip art characters, a video segment, two web-links (that didn’t work for some reason) and every wipe, fade, zoom, split and animate that the software had to offer.
What was it about, do you remember? What was the key idea? What did the presenter want you to do about it? Don’t know, or not sure? Don’t feel bad. The presenter didn’t know either.
Why am I telling you this? Actually, that’s the first question every communicator should ask. (If they don’t ask, the audience does… which is really awkward for everyone.) As for me, I’m telling you so you become better communicators. Think of it as a public service.
Once I’m clear about that, I need to ask ‘who’s my audience?’ You are. What do I know about you? Let’s see: interested in ideas, tech savvy (but not too much), usually a bit strapped for time but can find a moment to read the odd blog post, looking for practical tools and techniques to be better at… whatever it is that you do.
Once I know who you are (and why I want to talk to you) then I can focus on my messages.
- Know what you want from your audience. (tick!)
- Know who that audience is. (tick!)
- Know what you want to say to them. (tick!)
Ok, so NOW I can think about the medium that might best serve the messages I want to convey to my audience so I can get the result I want.
I’m thinking maybe a blog post…
Meg Johnstone
Well, what a great surprise it was to receive this email about your new site. I have just completed a draft for a workshop I am running and am going to be asking people to reduce their paperwork and increase their communication with each other in a meaningful way. Now I am also going to ask them to share “how much of what they are generating is necessary and whose listening?” I train in a sector where everybody’s catch cry is ” that they are strapped for time” and clear communication goes out the window. I am hoping my messages reach my audience and they go away and become better team members and provide better results for clients. Meg
Jason
Hey Meg,
Welcome to the conversation, I hope you’ll join in again sometime! Most organisations complain about their communications (internal and external) without really defining exactly what is the nature of the problem; is there Too Much, or Not Enough or the Wrong Kind of communication? We get them to list the sorts of things they need to communicate (update on information, call for ideas, the result of a decision, invitation to lunch etc.) and a second list of the forms of communication they use (face to face, email, text, office gossip etc.) then figure out which medium best delivers which message (let’s do performance reviews over coffee, not over the loudspeaker). They quickly reduce the quantity of communication (and therefore paper etc.) while dramatically improving the quality. Is that something that might work for you?
Meg Johnstone
Hi Jason,
I like this exercise because it makes people think about what works for them. From my experiences I think we also have lost touch with actually speaking face to face with people because email is easier. Then, people get so busy that they either spend all day in their emails “fire fighting” the problems people tell them about via email or make a decision that if the emails are coming in too thick and fast, delete the old ones and if it is important enough people will email you back. I think we have it all a bit skewed really. I would definitely include an exercise along the lines that you are talking about because it will get people talking. Can’t change behaviour without that 🙂 Meg
Jason
It’s a great thought-starter Meg, especially if the group draw it up like a table so you can consider all reasons to communicate against all ways to communicate. (Interestingly, it’s only the second of those two lists that keeps getting longer). I did this with a Science Museum where we wanted kids to learn different facts about the Solar System in the best way for each fact. We included all the senses (including that of humour) and all forms of activity (draw, write, build, play, guess…) then looked for the best intersection: the best way to appreciate the sulphurous atmosphere of Venus was to smell it, the best way to illustrate the gravity of Jupiter was with some rigged bathroom scales… this approach allows elegant and innovative use of all media, even the old ones we take for granted. jc
Wade
I believe the essence of this topic can be summarised by a quote often attributed to Patton (as well as others); “don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with the results”. What patton was referring to was the ‘ends’ as opposed to the ‘means’. When we tell people to ‘develop a company newsletter’ or ‘start a blog’, we are telling them ‘how’ to communicate, not what to accomplish. The medium (how) is such an easy decision in comparison to the message (what). If we get the medium wrong, then you simply try another, and another, until you find the right one/s. The message on the other hand is not as forgiving. Get the message wrong and no amount of trying will get you the right medium!
Jason
Y’know Wade, I hadn’t thought of it like that as I’m used to people who would personally work through a communications project step by step but I can see how Patton’s approach to leadership sits nicely over the top of that results-audience-message-medium model if you wanted to break each step into a separate area of responsibility, so thanks for the insight. I guess the common principle is the same: get clear on the big questions before worrying through the details, which should be easily delegated once everyone understands what the objectives are. Do you think that hierarchy’s tendency to break important work down into meaningless pieces has encouraged people to care about (say) the HOW while ignoring the WHY (or vice versa) or are we trained to see only the parts of the world we’re qualified to deal with? What say you?
Wade
Hi Jason, I have probably sent this thread a little off topic sorry, but what I was attempting to convey is that your results-audience-message-medium model is LEADERSHIP IN ACTION. This is more than just a communication model.
Nice return too! This is worth pondering further but my initial reaction is that they are a cause and effect relationship. Hierarchy tell us HOW so there is no need to think about WHY. We might do it if we want to, but the business has removed the need (and by extension, the desire). This has a cause and effect relationship whereby we only see the individual parts because there is no driver for us to consider how the parts interact with the whole. In the HOW before WHY model, the system is hidden from us. Our job as leaders is to expose people to the system and empower them to be curious about it; not to hide it from them. The result of such curiosity is HOW. Your model does this and hence I call it LEADERSHIP IN ACTION. If you want to kill innovation, hide the system.
Jason
You’ve reminded me of my favourite scene of Disney’s 1940 Fantasia, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence, where Mickey Mouse casts a spell on a broom to carry water to fill the sorcerer’s cauldron. Mickey awakes from a nap to discover the broom mindlessly filling the pot to overflowing, but when he tries to stop it he is shoved aside by the relentless, marching tool. Mickey shatters the broom with an axe but the splinters become a robotic drone army, programmed only for the HOW with no concept of the WHY. Whenever I see institutions producing completely perverse outcomes (drug trafficking in prison, cheating in academia, vulnerable people harmed by those assigned to protect them) I think of those mindless, marching brooms. We don’t know what the hell we’re doing, but we’re meeting our KPIs.
Wade
Ahhh, this is interesting! If the hierarchy communicates the HOW we are mindless drones? What would we be if they communicated the WHY?
Jason
I think of the standard communication as the ‘Ownership’ gambit (the hierarchy won’t tell you WHY we’re doing this but I’ll say a bit about WHAT will have to change and then totally micromanage you on HOW… now OWN this change!) and we all know it doesn’t work. What does work is the ‘Authorship’ approach (Let me tell you WHY this matters and give you an outline of WHAT that means. HOW will it work? You tell me!) that gives control and freedom to people, who then take ownership of what is their idea.
Jason
“A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem”.
Albert Einstein