Free Article By Paul Glen of C2
Consulting
Every month we add to this collection of articles from the free monthly
newsletter IT Professionalism.
You are also free to print these articles in your newsletter or magazine if
you follow our Reprint Policy.
To subscribe to it, click here.
Too Much Information
Technical people have a bad reputation for
being poor communicators. And unfortunately, it's not entirely undeserved. If
you ask managers in the finance department about why they think that the IT
people they deal with are bad communicators, they point to all the common
complaints. "They speak in impenetrable jargon."
"They don't listen well."
"They don't understand what I'm trying to
accomplish."
While these are sometimes valid critiques, the
problem often lies elsewhere. Frequently, we do listen well and we do understand
what the business wants to do. (OK, the jargon thing is fair.)
The real problem was driven home for me
recently at a conference where I was giving a presentation. I came early to hear
what some of the other speakers had to say. They clearly articulated lots of
interesting ideas. But ultimately, many failed to transmit the key points that
they wanted to share.
Why? They simply ran out of time. I was
surprised at how consistently the conference managers needed to give presenters
the hook in order to keep the day remotely on schedule. After 15 minutes,
presenters were still talking about slide No. 4 of 40, and it was clear that we
weren't going to get the discussion we really wanted out of the talks.
It wasn't that their information was
uninteresting or poorly organized or padded with irrelevant data. The problem
was that the more information a presenter wanted to share, the less we in the
audience received. The presenters were so enamored of their own ideas that they
couldn't condense them into a form for others to digest. Every detail was so
precious that they couldn't part with a single one.
Unfortunately for the audience, that meant that
they didn't get much of anything. They were being assaulted with too much
information and lost the main ideas in the onslaught.
I've found that this is a common problem, not
just on the speaking platform, but in most offices. CEOs dismiss CIOs as being
hopelessly mired in details and unsuitable for higher management posts because
they can't communicate the core of an issue in a paragraph or less. Clients
write off project managers because they can't pull the important message out of
the complete picture. Business analysts consider developers hopelessly technical
because they won't relate important information in a format that others can use.
As problem solvers, we delude ourselves into
thinking that others can't understand anything about a problem without
understanding everything about it.
If you'd like to be a better communicator and
overcome the too-much-information problem, here are a few things to think about
before you open your mouth:
What do you want them to remember from the
conversation an hour from now? Managers, clients and subordinates are barraged
with information and data all day, every day. Most of it passes through their
brains like cars through a freeway interchange. Think carefully about what you
want them to recall in an hour. If you were to go back and ask them what the
conversation was about, what would you want them to say?
The half-life of information is short. What
falls outside of that recollection window may be irrelevant detail that's better
left unsaid.
What do you want them to remember from the
conversation a week from now? If it's hard to retain information for an hour,
think about a whole week. What do you want your audience members to remember a
week after your discussion? Realistically, it will be considerably less than
what they will recall after an hour.
What do you want them to do with the
information? Most business communication has a purpose beyond just
self-expression. Usually, the motive is either calibration -- keeping others
informed of progress and approach -- or action. If it's calibration alone, the
previous two questions should guide your communication. If you want people to
make a decision or take action, tell them what you want them to do. And give
them the information they need to carry out that action.
If you want your words to carry more weight,
start by cutting down on the number you use. Powerful communicators say more
with less rather than less with more.
© Copyright 2005 by Computerworld Inc., One
Speen Street, Framingham, MA, 01701. Reprinted by permission of
Computerworld. All Rights Reserved.
