In a survey of communication problems across 34 Engineering and IT projects the following five categories accounted for practically all of the communication breakdowns and confusions that affected project delivery schedules or costs. Do any of these sound familiar from your experience?
- Assurances Problems
- Meanings of Goals Poorly Defined
- Hidden Information
- Micro Management / Under Feedback
- Why don’t they care like I do?
In the last post we looked at the importance of getting clear about over promises up front. It is so important to get in the habit of delivering on what you say you will deliver.
In this post we will look more deeply into Goals and the meanings people make up about them when they are poorly defined. In each future post we will take on another of these five types of mistakes that create so much havoc.
Although they may sound common sense, mastering each of these will solve the majority of misconceptions, miscommunications, and costly problems that Engineering, Science and Technical Leaders must deal with. There is no substitute for quality communication and shared understanding to accomplish and succeed where others fail.
Number 4: Goal Definition Misperceived
Team members (customers and development, suppliers and production) don’t have a shared understanding for goal they are trying to accomplish or create. It causes a lot of stress if you have rugby players on a soccer field and the customer thinks they paid for an American football game.
Recommended Solution: The effectiveness of communication is proportional to how “grounded” in tangible, shared reality you can make it. Models, mock ups, and prototypes help customers to visualize whether you have understood what they are requiring. But many times the problem is created by talking abstractly about the future goal.
Listening for abstract and intangible descriptions and asking the questions to specify any fuzzy details can make a huge difference. Try asking,
- “How specifically do we see that going?” and
- “What specifically do you mean by…?“
These two questions, and variants similar to them, are the ones that superior Engineers and their leaders seem to use a lot to drive down to the important details.
Practice intentionally over-using these for a week and you will begin to see the advantages in tangible clarity.
Next time we will look at how and why hidden agenda and people’s ability to fool themselves gets in the way of success, along with what you can do to deal with it. Until then figure out how you are going to practice these seemingly simple questions each day.
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