Let’s now take one extra step and attempt to distil everything we’ve learned so far into 16 sins of Modern Communication.
1. Not aware of your Intent (change behavior, change mental state, change emotional state)
2. Not documenting before conversing (missing Context)
3. Not documenting after conversing (vaporising Content)
4. Diverging aimlessly (false Maturity, likely signals we’re engaging the wrong group)
5. Converging prematurely (false Maturity, and worse with missing Context e.g. done with the wrong group)
6. Using your tools improvisationally
7. Lack of commitment to maintain data integrity
8. Improper assessment of Importance. False alarms and noise.
9. Broadcasting synchronously for fear of non reception
10. Not acknowledging broadcasts but complaining about synchronous broadcasts
11. Failure to establish Context with the appropriate audience before converging
12. Failure to provide Content at the appropriate density (too much info, too little info)
13. Not listening before broadcasting
14. Not repeating after broadcasting
15. Rigidity. E.g. sync for all the things or async for everything, not allocating time for synchronous conversations.
16. Undercommunicating. people need to hear something in different phrases, forms, and channels until it “registers”. Err on the side of overcommunicating
Perfect communication is HARD. We can only make it less bad. We can communicate better by fixing one bad practice at a time.
In the first part of this series, we dissected the belly of modern communication and got to know the Pieces. Then in the second part, I looked at how they relate with each other and what Rules we can derive from them. In part three, we mapped out some Steps we can take to ensure we are communicating as efficiently and effectively. In part four we wrote ourselves a Script to bulletproof our outwards communication. Part five is a compilation of bite-sized Guide for you to examine and design a communication architecture that works for your organisation.
Experiment, pick what works, drop what doesn’t. Weave away my friend.
