I Think We Have a Failure to Communicate

The title is similar to a famous quote from the movie “Hud” with Paul Newman who only had to communicate with the boss man and still had a problem. With the technology we have in the world today you would think that communications would have become that much easier but it is the reverse. Sure, information can move much faster from ear to ear and eye to eye but it’s the sending and receiving that gets complicated. We are no longer forced to speak directly with someone to transfer messages because of text messaging, email and voicemail among others. In fact more and more people would rather communicate this way to save time and reduce the risk of getting caught up in a long conversation. It’s fast and easy to send an email outlining your thoughts in a brief gaggle of words which will be seen and absorbed by the recipient. But here is where the problem begins. Words alone cannot always convey the message properly if you don’t take the time to properly articulate and punctuate your sentences. You see it is very often the recipient that does this for you and many times they do it incorrectly. When this happens then you could find out that your message was interpreted somewhat differently than was expected. Hopefully it wasn’t something that may create a catastrophe but it has happened. The other issue is the lack of a voice inflection which sometimes indicates seriousness, humour or sarcasm. This allows the recipient to provide their own spin and I have seen this blow up into a major quarrel many times. These short blasts of info also do not allow for a recipient to listen and hear what is being communicated and worse to be able to question the sender if something isn’t understood and probe until the message is clearly been transmitted. It may seem like a small thing to many people but over the years in business dealings I have seen a considerable amount of money and time wasted on “what seemed like” minor information errors. The electronic age is here to stay so maybe the only thing to do is to read your own communiqués and put yourself into the role of a cocktail waitress during working hours who doesn’t know you from Adam and is trying to understand what you are attempting to communicate. If she does get it you have been successful. A very difficult task, try it sometime.