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Wha..?

Seriously, I told my dear bride this just last night! I was explaining the value and difficulty of good communication.

I have a client who does not communicate. He yells, but doesn’t say anything. Wind and fury signifying nothing.

Good stuff, Jason.

Indeed, I’ve seen communication as one of mankind’s greatest challenges for a longer time now. But it’s worth it: if you manage to truly communicate, your relation with whoever this person is, will become greatly propelled. Takes some time though…i guess first you’ll have to knock out them other four persons in the conversation…

Typical. More 37signals KISS -washing. You guys just can’t leave it alone. Simplify this, simplify that, everything should be simplified. Well you can take your Osmo Wiio and…

(Just demonstrating the second tenant there; If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in just that way which does the most harm. ;) )

Another interesseting communication theorist is Paul Watzlawick [1].

One of is axioms is:

“One Cannot Not Communicate”

This means anything you do and equally important don’t do is an act of communication. This should be applied to customer service as users might interpret any unanswered email as a non-verbal affront.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Watzlawick

Good one Paul. lol

What do you mean, “was”? Osmo’s still very much alive. :) (or is this the second law at work again…)

Thank you for bringing the legendary Wiio I forward! My favourite quote :)

Surely you jest. 99% of human communication is quite successful. It’s just so seamless you don’t notice it when it works, but you do notice when it fails.

I like books with pictures.

A) This is why woman talk much :-)

B) I think the theory is crap because it is counterproductive. If you truly believe it you will think that the things you say will be missunderstood in any way, so why say it?

Interesting. I’d add there are also two other people: who you really are and who the other person really is, ending in eight people in a two people conversation.

Those “laws” are parody of course but I don’t like this one: “The more communication there is, the more difficult it is for communication to succeed.”

What’s the definition of success?

Besides, communication is not the goal – we communicate to understand, solve problems, reach consensus, fuel creativity etc. These goals do require a lot of communication.

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The last observation (about the 6 people) is an old one. It was in my old “Communication technology” book from 1996, and in one of the books of Béla Halassy, from the mid 80s.

And yes, it seems like a really, really accurate observation.

And just experience all these observation each day. Maybe that’s why our managers does not believe in communication at all. :)

Tangentially related would be Grice’s Conversational Maxims