Communication? Elementary, My Dear Watson
I just finished having lunch with each of my daughters at their elementary school. The lunch conversations for each were... um... fascinating experiences. The first lunch was with my daughter, Abby, a kindergartner. Surrounded by diminutive talkers, lunch chat went something like this:
"My brother picks his nose."
"So does mine. It's always green and gross."
"Hey, Abby's dad brought Oreos! Can I have an Oreo?"
"Me too! Can I have one?"
"We fed Oreos to our dog once. He threw up in the minivan."
"We can't bring our dog in the car. My dad won't allow it."
"My mom won't either. She keeps her car shiny."
"Hey, Abby's dad, your head is shiny. Do you use the same stuff my mom uses on her car?"
It was the conversational equivalent of staring into the sun. Or logging onto Twitter. Now contrast that with Lauren's class. Conversation with 5th grade girls goes something like:
"Nuh-Uh"
"Uh-Huh"
"TUH!" (which is more of an exasperated gasp, hard to capture phonetically)
"Like... like... "
"No way"
(Insert numerous eye rolls.)
Very little was actually communicated that a 44-year-old man could follow... but they seemed to understand each other. I doubt Jane Goodall would have done any better.
I was talking with a colleague this morning about communication and how important story-telling is in the art of conveying what you want to say. There's an art to sharing just the RIGHT AMOUNT of communication. Your goal is to be engaging enough that people will WANT to know more about your accomplishments.
Let's take the next three potential bullet points for status reports... all of which are meant to convey information about exactly the same task on the same project:
- We're late.
- The testing report was not completed yet again this week because Fred forgot to talk to the IT team lead, who had most of the detail surrounding the report since December, but refuses to discuss it with any of our team because of office politics. Anyway, after our project sponsor forced the IT team to comply, he called Fred to set up a meeting last Tuesday at 3:30 PM in Room 702 of the East Campus Building. Fred was called away by his wife to attend their son’s school program (which Fred had also forgotten to make note of), and when he left to go to the program, he neglected to mention anything about the meeting. So it is now three months since the requirements were completed by IT, and our team still does not have the testing report complete. Our sponsor will be discussing Fred’s dropped balls with him next week, and this will probably appear in his performance evaluation (at least it had better)
- The testing report is not complete. We are now three months behind schedule on this deliverable (originally due 12-28). Fred is accountable for this deliverable.
The first bullet? Totally fifth grade girl. The second one? Kindgarten all over again. The final bullet gives you just enough information and engages your curiousity to ask intelligent questions.
So what grade is your communication? Are you branding your accomplishments with the right amount of information?