Blog posts on communication

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Email Isn't the Problem

  I find there are plenty of times when email is a great tool (for example: providing background material in advance of discussions). Yes, often email is misused and there are plenty of bad processes around email. But it isn't very sensible to say we shouldn't use a hammer (email) because when we use it to cut paper it isn't very useful.  We shouldn't misuse a tool; that doesn't mean we shouldn't use the tool properly.

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• Email Isn't the Problem

  ... I find there are plenty of times when email is a great tool (for example: providing background material in advance of discussions). Yes, often email is misused and there are plenty of bad processes around email. But it isn't very sensible to say we shouldn't use a hammer (email) because when we use it to cut paper it isn't very useful. We shouldn't misuse a tool; that doesn't mean we shouldn't use the tool properly.

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• Attracting Members and Volunteers to Professional Organizations

  Organizations frequently get attached to their ways of doing things and fail to adapt to changing conditions.

  ...

  many membership organizations... turn from being focused on promoting their mission to being focused on perpetuating their organization.

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• The Importance of Leadership by Those Working to Improve Management

  There is a need to communicate with executives in a language they understand in order to make big changes. That requires an understanding of business and an appreciation for the importance of actually delivering value over talking about good plans.

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• A Good Management Culture Encourages the Debate of Ideas

  I believe much of the reason for fear of critical thinking is insecurity and mistaking respect for people with not making anyone uncomfortable. When people are insecure or unconfident they often take criticisms of ideas, plans, results, etc. as personal attacks. Then misunderstanding of don't be "dis-respectful" to people comes into play.

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• Mistake Proofing Using Enhanced Stop Signs

  The video shows a system that cascades a sheet of water and displays a stop sign directly in the path of trucks ready to crash into a tunnel (because the truck is too tall).

  The driver had ignored several less obvious signals that they were headed for danger. This is an application of one of my favorite management (and industrial engineering) concepts: mistake proofing. As I have stated before, often it is really mistake making more difficult (as it is in this case) rather than mistake proofing.

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• Your Choices Determine if Others Will Find You Credible

  If you are promoting the latest fad diet book and other high priced gimmicks the web site they have and deciding to appear on popular but scientifically inaccurate TV shows makes perfect sense. But those choices damage any credibility that could be had otherwise and make it difficult for others to take you seriously. You just put yourself into the bin with all the fad diets sales pitches in play at any time.

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• Making Your Case to Senior Executives

  My advice is to grow your circle of influence and build the capability of the organization to adopt a customer focused continual improvement management system. Once that is done, speaking to the c-suite is easy. Before that is done, speaking to them is still easy, unless you want them to change their short term financial focus.

  As with all people, CEOs are influenced by good stories. So if your goal is to “make a sale” (for whatever you are selling) putting in stories that speak to their way of seeing things is always wise. By looking at the rhetoric they use and actions they have taken you should be able to see what they have a soft spot for in stories and use that to craft the stories you will tell to make your case.

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• Building a System to Reduce Interruptions for Software Developers

  I feel strongly about the damage done by interruption to maker's focus. My appreciation for this damage to system performance was greatly enhanced as I became a software developer.
  
  In my work prior to software development I could see that interruptions were not ideal but they were not so damaging to my work and they do also have value. But work that requires extra focus, and software development sure did for me, the damage increasing greatly.

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• A Powerful Tool: The Capacity Matrix

  One of the things that I learned about at that seminar was using a capacity matrix to improve student learning. It is one of those ideas that when you hear about it, immediately you realize this is a vastly superior method to those current used. I am cynical/experienced enough to know that just because much better methods are available, and explained to people, is no guaranty they will be used.

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• The Use and Misuse of Technical Jargon

  Overwhelming people with jargon when trying to introduce new ideas is not usually helpful. Using a couple pieces of jargon can be helpful as it reinforces the idea that this is new stuff and can make people tie the new ideas to new terms.

  Technical jargon is helpful in enabling experts being able to quickly communicate unambiguous (well less ambiguous) specific meaning which is why jargon usually exists - to allow for communication to be more effective.
  
  Certainly at times jargon is also used by experts to baffle or impress non-experts rather than to help communication. Reducing this use of jargon would be a good thing.

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• Knowledge, Personality, and Persuasive Power

  These traits, while providing a guide to understand your means to influence the organization also provide a guide for potential weaknesses in your management system. There is really no advantage to having decisions unduly influenced by those with persuasive power while ignoring ideas from those without much ability to persuade people. What you really want it to follow the best course of action, not the course championed by the most persuasive person.

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• How to Respond to a Request for Estimates on Software Development

  If they say they need some way of deciding if doing that work is wise or something that is going to be so difficult that it isn't worth it then some kind of estimate is sensible.  If they talk about scheduling, then other explanations make sense to me - talking about the issues with fixed estimates etc. but giving them alternatives of fixed schedule with variable features (if there is a business need to deliver on some date)., etc.

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• Better Meetings for Your Organization

  This is similar to Deming’s ideas on management, I don’t believe their is a recipe to follow. There are principles that are universal. But what specific form they take depends greatly on the specific circumstances and systems in place.

  Here are principles I believe will help:

  • Have a written objective
  • Document decisions and actions to be taken
  • Prepare people in advance (and don’t expect people to come if there isn’t a good reason for them to be there)
  • Talk to those involved in the meetings to learn what is working well, what needs to be improved and if the meetings are worth the effort (should there be fewer meetings or should less time be taken with them)

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• Hexawise Buys the Beers

  George Box was an amazing person, scientist and statistician. One of the traditions George started in Madison, Wisconsin was the Monday Night Beer Sessions.

  An excerpt of Mac Berthouex’s introduction to An Accidental Statistician: The Life and Memories of George E. P. Box:

  I met George Box in 1968 at the long-running hit show that he called “The Monday Night Beer Session,” an informal discussion group that met in the basement of his house. I was taking Bill Hunter’s course in nonlinear model building. Bill suggested that I should go and talk about some research we were doing.

  Hexawise has decided to bring this tradition to software testing...

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