Communication is Hard
We work in technology. I suppose that means we should always embrace the madness of data and information in exchanges. However, since I forever fear T-2000’s destruction of society (or your favorite brand of technology overlord — perhaps Ready Player One?), I still see humans as a critical component of any organization, process, task. I’m not sure if I am excited for Netflix to roll out some AI-built content featuring Adam Sandler. Maybe they already have…
Both professionally and personally, for the last few months, my observation skills have been focused on a theme of communication. This is actually pretty common for how I personally operate. Something interesting comes up, it seems like a problem — or even better, someone points out that I’m blissfully ignorant that a problem exists. I spend the next few months evaluating how it works, what it means, why it is failing, and I try to come up with ideas on how to fix it. Then, through a series of highly scientific trial and error activities, I try to reduce the negative impact of that issue on that component of my life.
Shared Understanding
Even in a small business this task is daunting. Think about it in an organization, managing risk and assets in orbit or beyond from locations around the world. Do you think the guys at Thule Air Base have a shared understanding of what is happening at the Pentagon? At Kirtland Air Force Base? At Clark Air Base? It’s probably easy to bet that folks in the Philippines are more concerned about sea water corrosion of materials and equipment than the folks in an arid, land locked climate like Albuquerque, NM. Now add elements of budget pressures, politics, etc. Decisions become mysterious and people get frustrated by processes that have undesirable outcomes from their myopic view.
Now, think of systems that are common thread challenges for every government organization, like personnel, finance, etc. The data is updated on some cadence that puts one system ahead or behind of two to three other systems. Why is this so hard?
- Proximity from Control
- Dependencies between Data Sets
- Human Error in Data
- Enormous Monolithic Legacy Systems
- Out of Sync Delivery
- IP and Data Rights… to name a few
There is a passionate move to work on integration of applications and data. With silos and fractures of data, this is a good swing of the pendulum. Hopefully data rights and other reasons lawyers are employed can be alleviated, and real, value-added, operational-ready integrations can be made. At least let’s get summarized data out of systems and aggregate it elsewhere for a more comprehensive understanding when we are making decisions, because hitting multiple systems with different complexities that might take a Ph.D. to operate is probably not quite as efficient as we need to make a decision. Especially systems that crash or take days to process analysis. That’s not likely fast enough for the information age.
Communication is often one-way in hierarchical organizations. I told you what to do, or I at least I believe I did, so you must understand. Far enough down the chain of command, people are too intimidated to push for clarity, and this disconnect will lead to miscommunications that can be attributed negatively. Standing in front of a group and lecturing is a skill. It is a skill that can be engaging but deceiving in comprehension of the message. Your team may congratulate you on a great message delivered — but does the important part happen? Do they understand the direction or vision you are trying to reinforce?
So how can we get a shared understanding? You might be opposed to meetings, as you have seen plenty of them be wasteful, or you’re stuck in so many meetings that your time for your job is so fractional that you describe it in “quarks.” One of our engineer brains came up with something analogous in this article about data pruning.
Step 1. Observe your team(s): are they pulling in the right direction? Listen to everyone, not just deputies.
Step 2. Identify meetings that need pruning. Easy kills. Ensure your deputies are just as ruthless. Meetings are viral and just need a host to survive.
Step 3. Identify opportunities to reinforce what’s important (it has a half-life).
Step 4. Consistently reflect what you are hoping to communicate in your actions.
Step 5. Reinforce participation in a broad, rank-agnostic feedback loop.
Step 6. See steps 1–5.
Stating your objectives in the simplest form possible and using all available tools to reinforce them will help people pull in the same direction. Be self-aware of your actions, behaviors, writing, and any slippage or creep that is not a stated objective in any of those modes of communication. They are signs that either something new is important, or you have slippage from the mission. Writing an email and saying “go” is a quark of action. It is simple to forget, ignore, or dismiss. Offering transparency and focusing on vision for a large group of people is hard, but rewarding.
Silos of Understanding
Silos happen. They are quite common. Part of silos are tribal: how we structure our organizations into easy-to-understand components like the finance department, teams, products. We like patterns and compartmentalization. They’re soothing, like a pacifier. Structure provides peace of mind.
Recently, it was brought to my attention that some things I understand very well are not understood by others in our company. That lack of understanding results in rumors, or other less productive chatter. This was humbling. Perhaps because I live and breathe a lot of different information throughout the company day to day. It sparked a conceptual image in my head that I am going to use very rudimentary graphic skills to generate.
The boundaries of my capacity to understand all of the things happening in the organization naturally form a silo. I wanted to create a really cool Venn diagram to describe the situation. Given my limited design skills I came up with something that approximates what I mean by the natural formation of silos as organizations expand. Selfishly, I am describing my point of view as an executive within a company. Your overlap, order, or concerns may differ based on your perspective.
In my career I have worked in the bureaucratic nightmare of large industry, and extra small (less than 7 total employees), extra nimble organization. Silos of knowledge still manage to creep into the smallest of companies. Do you really need everyone to be an expert at accounting at a small business? Everyone to be an expert at taxes? Probably not. You might want them to all be experts in marketing, but I think that is pretty universal. A friend who works for NetSuite is a strong advocate for his company and I definitely suspect my other friend who owns his own landscape architecture firm is similarly strong in his self-advocacy.
The problems generated by silos of information can often be readily broken down through person-to-person communication. You probably share a small central office or at least you’re small enough to pick up the phone and more frequently than not get a human on the other end. Have an accounting question? Call the money person in your organization.
As soon as you have a second floor of your operation, or once you’re truly executing with what I would describe as hyper-specialization, things get harder to solve. Accounting might be a whole wing of your operation, it could be that your CFO has a team of their own. It’s actually easier for me to discuss this in terms of a technical services team. Imagine a world where you have nothing but knowledge workers. Now imagine you hire an ITSM contractor or team to support that team. As the ITSM operations stands up, their growing interest is to be more ‘efficient’ and to operate cheaper. It is a common reductionist strategy to suggest that a team should always be trying to operate cheaper. The challenge is, cheap can also reflect the quality of service. Cost management efforts can actually result in increased costs across the operation. We see all the time in the government that teams do everything they can to avoid going to the IT services team because the experience is that rough.
How Do We Fix It?
It is pretty easy for most leaders to say, “I understand the silos, it is my job to lead the overall success.” It sounds like the right thing for your career, and probably is a natural evolution in your responsibilities. In the work we have done with large commercial organizations and with the Department of Defense, it is just not that simple.
We have worked with people who are in that transition phase, from a specialist to a leadership role. They think no one knows more about their issues than they possibly do, and that their career depends on fixing the things they see as important. They are right, mostly. The problem comes from the previous, poorly drawn diagram. What you once knew as a leader is probably out of date the day you became a leader. It is natural to figure out creative workarounds to important problems. It is also natural to become emotionally tied to your solution and have blinders on with your new end users. Your expertise has betrayed you. Not only that, but from your perspective it is incredibly difficult to watch the dance unfolding on the floor. You are still a dancer. You see a whirlwind of dancers and not the recently spilled drink that can cause you to fall in five moves.
Look — it happened to me. I merrily worked in a world assuming people knew everything in my mind. The things I do that have become repetitive and basic are mysterious and unknown to others. And that’s a problem.
This is where ecosystem exploration and systems discovery can be helpful. Through interviewing end-users and leaders, a noble discovery team can help realize quick wins, help understand strategic efforts, and help avoid the squeaky wheel syndrome. That syndrome is when the loudest or most politically savvy projects are executed, often at the cost of those less willing to fight bureaucracy. As soon as your operation has two floors, you’re likely in need of some basic, periodic (we recommend quarterly) business and mission process reviews. Acknowledging problems is harder than it seems when you’re emotionally tied to an existing or pending solution. Naming a project, a meeting, or a product makes it significantly harder to kill, even when it’s already basically dead.
Going back to the ITSM example, you might have the cheapest in industry internal ITSM operation. You might also have the largest Best Buy Geek Squad bill as your team operates around your savings. Or, you have experts working on service efforts like what we have seen where high level aerospace engineers are doing systems administration efforts due to legacy solutions. These types of examples show how communication to teams to be efficient can result in increased overall costs, including the greatest pain of opportunity cost. You’re losing the battle for effectiveness of your operations.
The amount of cost and time savings that can be realized by having an outsider challenge assumptions is extraordinary. Communication is hard, it’s done in silos, and when you have hyper-specialization, successfully understanding the broader mission gets even harder. Working with a team adept at end-user discovery can help you better understand your operating picture from primary research from current end-users and mission leaders. Often you’re just too busy running the ship to see all of the leaks. Find an outside, unbiased team to provide you additional perspective on your risks, issues, and opportunities. Avoid relying entirely on other busy, emotionally exhausted members of your team to plug another hole.
