“Why doesn’t my manager listen when I explain the details?”

“Why doesn’t the developer just give me what I ask for?”

If you’ve ever heard these complaints—or made them–you’re not alone.  Questions like these are a symptom of a communication disconnect. Communication disconnects happen every day a variety of reasons. Three common reasons for disconnects are:

• Where we get information
• How we store and “re”present that information
• What we do with what we know.

Getting Information

Information exists in two primary places; outside us, and inside us. Some people tend to focus on the “out there information”, what they’ve seen, heard or touched. They seek specific concrete and factual experiences. You could call them “sensors” since they get information through their five senses..

Others find the information “inside” based on their experience, knowledge, and insights. With minimal external influence, these people dive inside themselves, and start looking for possibilities, meanings, relationships, and patterns. They’re more interested in “what does it mean” than “what”. These people could be called “intuitors”, since their intuition guides their actions, rather than data.

The disconnect happens when “sensors” and “intuitors” try to share information. A sensor asks a question expecting to get specific data points, and instead gets a rambling (to the “sensor”) discussion of patterns and possibilities. Instead of a general idea and pattern of information, the intuitor hears a flood of boring minutia leaving the requestor wondering what the other is blathering about.

To reconnect, a sensor can ask “what have you seen, heard or experienced that leads you to this conclusion?” Intuitors could ask “what does all this data mean?”  Even better is to know yourself – whether you’re an intuitor or sensor, and what the other person is. This enables you to respond to the other person’s style.

You can practice being the other type. If you tend towards “intuiting”, try to notice several “out there” things every day. Carry with a small notepad at all times and jot down your observations, for example, a dirty brown-and-white dog sleeping in the street; a  programming error that prints out the message, ‘RANK ERROR,’ then crashes Windows; a tall young woman in the next cubicle wearing Jovan perfume, making the noise of sharpening a gross of pencils.

Sensors can periodically pause and ask questions about the data in front of them. Is Jack’s current coding difficulty related to Jill being on vacation? It looks like progress is slowing, why? The Rule of Three encourages having at least three possible choices before selecting one. Use your imagination and explore beyond the first obvious answer.

Storing and “re”presenting Information

We store information internally in our mind as sights, sounds, feelings, or abstract concepts. The way we store information is called our representational (rep) system, since that is how we “re”present our experiences.

Take a moment and think back to a particularly enjoyable experience you’ve had a work. What came to mind? Did you see your teammates, maybe a particularly gnarly chunk of code you to which you finally saw the answer? Were there sounds of laughter and joking? Maybe you recalled feelings of happiness?

If you primarily saw the enjoyable experience, you use a visual rep system. Recalling memories and hearing sounds involves the auditory rep system. Primarily noticing the feelings (touching) means the kinesthetic rep system is being used. Remembering abstract concepts (the lack of visual, auditory, or kinesthetic descriptions) indicates a preference for the digital rep system.

Like most preferences, no rep system is better than another. They’re simply the way the way we tend to store and recall our experiences. We can (and usually do) use all of the rep systems, but most people have a preferred way of representing what’s in their mind.

The disconnect happens when interactions become intense, and the rep systems get crossed. Suppose you say, “That doesn’t sound right to me”, and I respond with “I can see that.” We just crossed rep system boundaries. You now have to translate my visual response into its correct translation in your auditory processing. To stay connected, I could have said, “Yes, I hear what you’re saying.”

To reconnect, listen for sensory words. When words appear like bright, clear, display, see, conceal, the speaker has a visual orientation. When you hear words like asked, talk, explain, complain, harmonize the speaker has overtones of a hearing orientation.  Feeling words such as touch, soft, smooth, pressure or excitement slipping into the conversation push towards a kinesthetic, or touch preference. When you become aware of words like believe, consider, decide, know, learn, process, perceive, the speaker is using the digital rep system.

To improve communicating, try to match the sensory mode of the other person. That way they won’t need to translate words from one sensory mode into another. A good time to practice this is when you reply to email. You can scan the incoming message for sensory words, and match the rep system in your reply.

Mind Reading

“I know what you’re thinking.” You’re thinking this is a lot of new stuff, and feeling overwhelmed with the ways communication disconnects happen. Which brings us to another disconnect called “mind reading”. Mind reading works on three basic (and faulty) assumptions:

• You take in the same information I do.
• You process this information as I would.
• You come to the same conclusions and decide to behave exactly as I do.

In short, I project my reality onto you, and tell you what you’re experiencing.

The disconnect happens when we mind read, and then take action without confirming what the other person really thinks. This creates misaligned goals, actions, and often hard feelings.

A developer made a decision that I thought should have been made by the customer. When I asked the developer if he should ask the customer, he said (and you can’t make up stuff like this), “I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I know what he wants better than he does.”

You can avoid this disconnect by not mind reading. Rather than assuming you know the answers, ask questions. I’ve had people become irritated when I asked clarifying questions in order to avoid mind reading. If you find someone mind reading you, you might ask them “How specifically do you know how I feel (think, whatever)?” or “What did you see or hear that leads you to that?”

Calibrating Communications

When I work with a client, I first try to understand where they get information. Do they look for data (sensors), or rather hear about how this fits in the grand scheme of things (intuitior)? Sometimes it’s not an either/or. Perhaps they need the fit in the grand scheme with supporting data.

When I supply the requested information, I try to match the requestor’s rep system. This saves time and effort since they don’t have to translate my meaning.

Lastly, to avoid mind reading, I ask how the communication went for them. Did they get what they needed, in the format they could use? If not, I have new information that allows me to change what I’m doing.  If they got what they needed, I’ve avoided the communication disconnects.

How do the environment and corporate culture impact managerial decisions? In what context does development context switching make sense? Here are three situations that make sense to me. (And I’m on the developer’s side of this discussion!)

1. Specialized skills. This would be those people that management is lucky to have one of, and their existence has to be spread across several projects to justify their existence. DBAs, architects, object specialists. Would agile coaches be included?

2. A project is completed, the programmers moved on to the next project and:
- a defect is located that needs to be corrected.
- the client requests a series of improvements.
Who better than the original developer(s)?

3. A developer hits a wait state based and can’t move forward until something from someone else arrives. Why not let them get started on something while they’re waiting?

I may be idealistic, but I don’t believe managers purposefully create situations to lower productivity.

Congruent Action

When the manager kicks off context switching, the actions make sense at that level. But systems are multidimensional, and his/her decisions impact other people. Congruent action contains three parts: self, other, context.

For context switching to be congruent, the manager needs to consider how the context switching affects the developer. This best way to find this answer is to ask. Anything short of “How it affect you (and your productivity) if I ask you to …?” involves mind reading, or how the manager THINKS the developer will respond. When the manager has this information, they can make an informed decision.

And Why is That?

People are incredible state machines. Our physiology and emotions create our states. We awaken in the morning and (eventually) go to bed, switching states all day long. Some states gradually morph into others. Some states grow stronger and allow us to get into flow situations where we enjoy the productivity of our thoughts and actions coming together creating high output levels. Some state changes happen abruptly when something jars us.

Restating George’s thought, it’s not the context switch out that’s difficult. It’s the context switch back. Unlike the wonderfully linear microprocessor, we humans tend to be incredibly nonlinear, tightly-coupled, loosely cohesioned (if you know what I mean) creations. This applies even to those of us who believe we are linear and straightforward.

The context switch destroys our current state. If the opportunity presents itself, we may have time to check point our thoughts and where we are in the process. But our thinking up to that point, our physiology, and emotions at that point get lost in the winds of change.

The return trip back then becomes a game of trying to find where we were, why we were there, and what we were doing.

I’m Disinclined to Agree

George stated this problem of people “switching and then switch back” is “unfortunate”. From a management standpoint, he may be correct. But managers would like to believe that knowledge workers are fungible, and that output equals the number of hours worked multiplied by some magic constant. That allows them to complete projects quicker by assigning more people, and having those people work more hours.

It just ain’t so. If you haven’t read Slack by Tom Demarco, do so. Order enough books so you get free shipping and give the extra copies to your manager, and his manager.

Context Switching is Fun!

I usually have 3 or more things going on at any time. Right now I’m doing exploratory work for one client (lots of try this, try that, well, how about trying something else?), upgrading a system for another client (I’ve already done three of their systems), and preparing for a class.

Context switching allows me to mentally shift gears. When I need time to think about what’s happening with the exploration, I can spin my chair, slap in another CD, and nudge the upgrade another step closer to completion.

Context Switching is Profitable!

Being able to swap between contexts allows me to supply better value to my clients. I can wonder about what to do next while I’m shuffling CDs. I can do exploration while I’m waiting for the CDs to finish loading. Everyone’s a winner!

Truth in Blogging

If you’ve read Johanna’s article, you’ll realize differences exist between our examples.

• One switches between similar tasks, the other doesn’t.
• I’m not under deadline pressure. (Should anyone be?)
• I get to choose when to switch contexts.

So the real problem is not context switching. The problem remains management that doesn’t understand what they manage, and how to make it fun and profitable.

Context Switching … good or bad? Share your experiences.

I arrived just before the rescue truck. The SUV lay on its side in the ditch. The VFD had already set up traffic control and fire suppression. Using standard rescue techniques and tools, “Mom” and the kids shortly walked out of the SUV. Other than needing to by a new vehicle, this story ends happily. But what happened? The Highway Patrol report will include some phrase like “too fast for existing conditions”. “Mom” has probably driven this road most of her life. It’s rained before while “Mom” was driving. But today the amount of rain, the wash over the road and her speed created a new context that “Mom” couldn’t cope with successfully.

Like this accident most “interesting events” happen because someone, somewhere, at sometime, loses track of the context. Context involves us and everything we’re connected to. “Involves us” includes our mental models, our world view, and our actions. We started changing at conception. We continue to change until after we die. Along the way, we grow, we learn, we change. Accidents happen when we change, but the “everything else” hasn’t. Learning may create an accident that leads to personal growth. Personal growth might make us uneasy with our current friends.

“Everything we’re connected to” is the environment we exist in. Our family, our friends, our career, our hobbies, everything with which we come in contact is in a state of flux. If our world view limits how we see things, we’ll create accidents by missing opportunities or reacting to things that aren’t there. If we hold to mental models that no longer apply to our current situation, we’ll be out of context when we act. Behaving like a 10 year old doesn’t work well now that I’m pushing 50.

We need to learn from accidents. Learn about ourselves, our context, how they interact, and how to keep them synchronized.