The Testing Blog

Really Communicate: Part II

Posted on August 21, 2009. Filed under: Uncategorized |

Earlier this month, I wrote a blog posting on How Do We Rise Above The Noise And Really Communicate?  The post was an exploration into why modern means of communication fail us. As the example, I used one of my colleague’s decision to tell something important in email. The piece was very damning of email as a communication median; I wasn’t singling out a particular person. People can’t help the communication zeitgeist that we’re in. I’m just trying to lift the veil so they know how it’s causing a communication breakdown (If you are humming Zeppelin, you get bonus points.)

So, it happens again.

Here’s another of example of email gone wrong:

One of the ladies at our church is over the kids program that I’m involved in. The program is about to kick off a new year, coinciding with the start of the school year. In an effort to be high tech (For my country church, it’s a big thing.), she’s switched to communicating to the workers through email. That’s very agreeable to me. In years past, the announcements for the kid’s program were buried in the Sunday bulletin with the women’s luncheon and choir practice. The only problem is, if you are going to communicate through email, you need to be effective in your communications.

She hosted a training over this past weekend. I was unable to attend the training because of a wedding out of town. I communicated this point so it was clear. No problem she said.

When I return from the wedding weekend, I see an email in my inbox from this lady. The email talked about how well the training went, and she was excited about upcoming year. It also mentions the upcoming conference for the program. It gives some details about it. She even highlights the details to make sure that everyone knows the price, date, and location. After I read through the whole thing and went on with my week.

Come Wednesday night, I see the email still in my inbox, and I begin to wonder when the program is actually going to start (usually it’s on Wednesday nights at about 6:00). So, I emailed her at about 7:00 pm right before I left work.

And asked her “When does [it] start?”

Later that evening, I get an email from her and she said, “The first night was tonight!”

I told her that “I was afraid of that” and that it “didn’t even dawn on me”.

Then she told me that “[she] figured [I] forgot.”

At that point I got a little defensive because I didn’t forget, nobody told me. I told her that I didn’t forget. I really didn’t know.

She apologized (Call me cynical, but it seemed insincere.), saying that she thought she told everyone. It was in the church bulletin, and the “email kind of stated not an exact date but said this week”.

The email she’s referring to was the one that I read on Monday when I returned from the wedding. The rather verbose email consisted of 4 paragraphs and 380 words. At this point I had read the email three times before trying to pull out the part that I had missed. I went back and looked again. I read it, and I read it. Then I found a sentence that referred to the training: “I hope it eased your minds about club starting this week”. That was the big announcement in the email! It was buried in fluff about how proud she was of everyone.

Emails are not a novel! Don’t write them like a novel, trying to build up suspense or hide meanings and obscure action! She eluded but never touched on the most important topic to get across: when the program starts! Everything else in the email doesn’t matter compared to Game Time. The trainings, the conferences, the words of encouragement; none of it mattered compared to actually having the meeting with the kids.

Disclosures: my pride is wounded a little about this because I take my responsibilities really seriously. I don’t want people to think I’m a dead beat volunteer. I don’t “phone it in” on things like this. I feel betrayed because I thought that email would let me know when to show up. I didn’t realize that I needed to follow up with her or read the church bulletin (even though I was out of town). I thought the point of implementing email was to make communication more streamlined. I didn’t know I had to go back to the old sources for information. Up to this point, she has sent us tons of little emails. Why didn’t she send a reminder out the day of? In her epic email, why didn’t she come out and say that we had our first meeting this week, August the 19th. Why wasn’t she cognizant to contact those that didn’t attend the training? Was she counting on the communication getting to me, that I read her email very carefully, or that I looked at the church bulletin? (One funny thing about the email. When writing this blog, I had to read through the email several times again just to find that sentence. I didn’t find it. Instead, I used ctrl-F. Hahaha.)

I am very much a believer in self responsibility. Ask anyone I work with, and they will tell you that Daniel doesn’t dodge blame when he’s responsible. If anything, I want take on all the blame and bring it to the fore front. I get satisfaction out of letting people know that I’m taking responsibility. But my gut told me that I can’t completely take responsibility for this screw up. At least not completely Why?

Doesn’t this sounds like a scenario from a software development team? A tester fails to test something that gets released to production and blows up:

“Why didn’t you test it? “

“I didn’t know. I didn’t see it in the documentation or the project tracking tool.”

“Well, I sent you an email on it. Did you read it?”

“I did, but I don’t remember that piece.” OR “No, I didn’t because I didn’t think that it pertained to me.”

Closing Remarks:

Communication is not about one person. If you throw some information out there and the other person doesn’t understand, you don’t get off scot-free because you threw it out there. If the person doesn’t understand you, you are still liable. Also, if you’re the listener or the one on the receiving end, you are not totally unresponsible if they give you an unclear message. You should be asking that important questions to ensure that their message gets to you with all proper meaning and tone attached. Communication break downs happen because of two people. If you know someone will not read your email, go talk to them in person (face-to-face: how novel!). Some people are brilliant but can’t read that well. Don’t be arrogant in thinking that you covered your butt. Think of a baton on a relay team. Does it matter if the hand off is bad or the catch is bad? No! The whole team is pwn’d if that baton gets dropped. When communication breaks down, everyone loses. You. The other person. The team. The company.

One more time because I like to rock.

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