A few year-end musings:
I’m hoping someone in another industry might be able to help me out, here.
In any collaborative endeavor, communication is of the utmost importance. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me as the years go by, and as I do this more and more, that people don’t really want to communicate with each other. Getting them to do so is frequently like pulling teeth.
Documentation is almost wholly ineffective. Either it’s too long and people don’t read it, or it’s not thorough enough and people can’t use it.
Email is useless. People don’t read their emails, and even if they do you lose a ton of information in the process.
Phone conversations are better than nothing, but the possibility for miscommunications is still very high.
So how, shy of talking individually to every person involved, do you communicate ideas to a large number of people? Or is talking to every person involved really the most efficient way to do it?
Recently I’ve found a lot of value in large displays. For example, we recently put up the game flow on the wall with pushpins and index cards, complete with all the cinematic locations. That’s helped a LOT. We also put the schedule up really big on the wall, and that’s helped somewhat.
I wonder if there’s any methods I’m just not thinking of, and that’s where you come in. In your jobs, in your industries… what methods of communication do you find effective?
Or is the best method really just talking to one person at a time?
Most people around me go for IM and email. Personally, I just talk to one person at a time. I walk all over my building to go ask people or tell people simple things, but in person. I find that it saves time and is more effective in the long run. If it’s really quick though, phone calls are better than IM, which is better than email. 😛
The big displays are popular with some other groups, but I don’t have enough experience with those yet.
Email is about all we can do when the entire organization at the different locations around the country need the information.
However I’ve found out that people don’t read them because the emails are too dense with paragraphs. Coworkers have told me they want short, bulleted lists of the most important information. Even the content on our Intranet is too dense and should really be condensed to lists.
For projects that involve fewer than 8 people, I find that I actually have to call people to get responses in a timely manner. Sometimes they’re good with email, but really I have to call. I much prefer email for my line of work since I work on the website and it’s more error-proof for me to copy/paste their changes from email.
My boss and I have good communication because we copy each other on a lot of things. But I’ve realized that’s rare even in other small departments. It’s really sad actually.
I really need to print this and stick this up on our little department billboard. I really don’t like working through emails. Unless your sending a file to someone, it’s really not a good way to communicate. I hate even more emails that just say “ok” or “I’m going to call you…”. Useless and takes space on the Exchange Server.
Emails are for sending files. If I ever send an email, it says “here’s that file I said I was going to send you.” Outside of that, I haven’t had any conversations via email since 8th grade.
No, that’s not true, but I haven’t had any conversations where anything useful came of them. Even emails coordinating times of meetings usually don’t work.
Really, I find that if you’re working on a project where any type of explanation is necessary, you have to talk to them in person. At first it appears to be the least efficient, but ends up being the most efficient, because when you just talk to people on the phone or over IM or whatever, they don’t get it. They think they get it, but they don’t. And you don’t find out that they don’t get it until they send you the part of the project that they worked on and it makes absolutely no sense. Make plans and send files through quicker methods of communication, otherwise, just walk over there, assuming you’re working out of the same building and everything.