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Agreed. The mistake I made when I was younger was thinking that good communication was about being able to clearly and concisely convey the information in your

Agreed. The mistake I made when I was younger was thinking that good communication was about being able to clearly and concisely convey the information in your head into another head. I eventually learned that this was necessary but not sufficient, because "the right way" to communicate varies significantly based on social / political / cultural / emotional / institutional dynamics. As a young man I simply didn't understand enough of those dynamics to be able to model the when and the why of communication (meta-communication?), even if I was good at the idea transmission part. Life experience helps immensely here.

navane 3y ago
Or you became "one of them", and now you too have an agenda.
- catlifeonmars 3y ago
  No it’s not about that. I’ve seen this failure case over and over again. When you communicate, it’s not enough to explain a solution. You have to painstakingly help others internalize the problem. Once you’ve done that, and gained enough critical mass, you find that the solution almost communicates itself. It’s almost like magic when you see an organization shift its thinking like this
  - Xcelerate 3y ago
    > When you communicate, it’s not enough to explain a solution. You have to painstakingly help others internalize the problem. This is why I think startups or small groups of people are still able to outcompete bigger incumbents. So many people worry “if I share my great idea, someone will steal it and implement it!” Far more often I’ve found it to be the case that I catch myself wondering if it would be less work to start a competitor to my current company based on my idea rather than continue attempting to translate it, broadcast it, and massage it into some form that convinces a critical mass of coworkers of its value such that it eventually turns into action. At least by starting my own company, I’ll know pretty quickly whether it was actually a good idea or not.
    - catlifeonmars 3y ago
      > This is why I think startups or small groups of people are still able to outcompete bigger incumbents. For sure. The overhead for communication is much lower. It’s possible to emulate this to some extent at a large company (I worked at AWS previously) by keeping teams small (6-10 people) while keeping team scope large (full lifecycle of an entire product family or vertical). For this to be successful I believe you need to give the team autonomy to decide what product and features to build, and room to fail without repercussions to allow for experimentation and calculated risk taking.
- atoav 3y ago
  No, you can be a good communicator without being a manipulative asshole with an egoistic hidden agenda. This is more about how communication works. Communicating ideas and intentions is always about shaping the words that leave your mouth in such a way the other side understands the thing you intended them to understand. Inexperienced communicators will say what makes sense to them and be surprised when someone else in a completely different frame of mind doesn't pull the same meaning from those words. Wanting people to understand you and shaping what you say in such a way they get it is not a bad thing. You would also talk differently to your kid, than say to your co-worker. This requires to a certain degree that you can see things from their perspective. Now surely you could use this for manipulative reasons if you are a soul-less bastard, but that doesn't say anything about about the practise.
  - a_gnostic 3y ago
    Communication is a two-way street, and is ineffective unless you are ready to answer questions and clarify yourself
    - atoav 3y ago
      Yeah sure, but communication is also something with a growing runtime cost, which is why starting into it with a realistic picture of the other person is important. Most people might ask one or two clarifying questions and stop asking after because they don't want to look like they are stupid. And the way I like to look at it is that we should try to have a good grip on ourselves first, because this is what we can affect ourselves — how you start into a communication will greatly affect the reaction of the others anyways. Especially in IT it is not rare that the answer to clarifying questions muddies the water even more, because explaining a thing often requires knowledge of other technical concepts. I work in an educational context nowadays and the people entering my door might be anything between totally clueless and domain experts, and just by looking you won't necessarily notice who is which, so indeed you need to figure this out in a small exchange. Bad communicators would skip that step and talk the same to both beginners and domain experts until they maybe get the clue, but if you're unlucky by that point the communication has already ended.
  - 3y ago

navane 3y ago

Or you became "one of them", and now you too have an agenda.

catlifeonmars 3y ago
No it’s not about that. I’ve seen this failure case over and over again. When you communicate, it’s not enough to explain a solution. You have to painstakingly help others internalize the problem. Once you’ve done that, and gained enough critical mass, you find that the solution almost communicates itself. It’s almost like magic when you see an organization shift its thinking like this
- Xcelerate 3y ago
  > When you communicate, it’s not enough to explain a solution. You have to painstakingly help others internalize the problem. This is why I think startups or small groups of people are still able to outcompete bigger incumbents. So many people worry “if I share my great idea, someone will steal it and implement it!” Far more often I’ve found it to be the case that I catch myself wondering if it would be less work to start a competitor to my current company based on my idea rather than continue attempting to translate it, broadcast it, and massage it into some form that convinces a critical mass of coworkers of its value such that it eventually turns into action. At least by starting my own company, I’ll know pretty quickly whether it was actually a good idea or not.
  - catlifeonmars 3y ago
    > This is why I think startups or small groups of people are still able to outcompete bigger incumbents. For sure. The overhead for communication is much lower. It’s possible to emulate this to some extent at a large company (I worked at AWS previously) by keeping teams small (6-10 people) while keeping team scope large (full lifecycle of an entire product family or vertical). For this to be successful I believe you need to give the team autonomy to decide what product and features to build, and room to fail without repercussions to allow for experimentation and calculated risk taking.
atoav 3y ago
No, you can be a good communicator without being a manipulative asshole with an egoistic hidden agenda. This is more about how communication works. Communicating ideas and intentions is always about shaping the words that leave your mouth in such a way the other side understands the thing you intended them to understand. Inexperienced communicators will say what makes sense to them and be surprised when someone else in a completely different frame of mind doesn't pull the same meaning from those words. Wanting people to understand you and shaping what you say in such a way they get it is not a bad thing. You would also talk differently to your kid, than say to your co-worker. This requires to a certain degree that you can see things from their perspective. Now surely you could use this for manipulative reasons if you are a soul-less bastard, but that doesn't say anything about about the practise.
- a_gnostic 3y ago
  Communication is a two-way street, and is ineffective unless you are ready to answer questions and clarify yourself
  - atoav 3y ago
    Yeah sure, but communication is also something with a growing runtime cost, which is why starting into it with a realistic picture of the other person is important. Most people might ask one or two clarifying questions and stop asking after because they don't want to look like they are stupid. And the way I like to look at it is that we should try to have a good grip on ourselves first, because this is what we can affect ourselves — how you start into a communication will greatly affect the reaction of the others anyways. Especially in IT it is not rare that the answer to clarifying questions muddies the water even more, because explaining a thing often requires knowledge of other technical concepts. I work in an educational context nowadays and the people entering my door might be anything between totally clueless and domain experts, and just by looking you won't necessarily notice who is which, so indeed you need to figure this out in a small exchange. Bad communicators would skip that step and talk the same to both beginners and domain experts until they maybe get the clue, but if you're unlucky by that point the communication has already ended.
- 3y ago