Since coming to my first corporate experience, I've learned massive amounts of common communication errors, both on the business and on the personal ends. Of the most desirable features are three razors:
1. Occam's Razor: Do not make unnecessary assumptions. If someone has told you one idea, do not generalize it across space and time. A particularly embarrassing instance of not following this rule occurred with me in my very first week. So there is this center table in my office and a co-worker said that usually the food kept there is, free for anyone to take. So I generalized this statement without making sure whether there were any boundary conditions, like people ordering food in a group. And that's exactly where I went wrong. There's also a system where people will start a discussion on a channel in Slack for ordering food together to save on delivery charges. This food is kept on the said table too, so that people can come pick it up when they want. And the idiot that I am, I picked up someone's order without thinking.
2. The distil-your-information-razor: Ruminate on what you want to say for a bit. Even if you instantly need to answer a question, quickly review in your head which aspects of the information are really essential to be communicated at the time. Verbosity is the worst when it comes to official communication. Even though they may say it multiple times, your boss and your senior colleagues are -NOT- your close friends. They have other people and their own social life to look at, so if you ramble on with unnecessary information, not just does it annoy them, it also dilutes the essence of your intention. When people think you're not trying to waste their time, it builds trust much quicker.
3. The compress-your-information-razor: Now this is more of a complex razor. For one, it relies on shared knowledge of language, terminology and jargon. If you try to express an elaborate idea by its niche title but the other person hasn't really heard of it then it's useless. If the language you're comfortable in is not the same they are, then compressing information is useless. However, even when introducing intentional errors and redundancy, one should keep in mind that its the necessary errors and redundancy that are brought in.
Why do you "need" errors?
Coming to work overseas (actually even before that), one can encounter people who aren't comfortable with some language, for instance English. So if you don't try to match your grammar and sentence structure with what they expect, even if their expected structure is incorrect, then communication becomes choppy and annoying. Better to do-as-the-romans-do.
1. Occam's Razor: Do not make unnecessary assumptions. If someone has told you one idea, do not generalize it across space and time. A particularly embarrassing instance of not following this rule occurred with me in my very first week. So there is this center table in my office and a co-worker said that usually the food kept there is, free for anyone to take. So I generalized this statement without making sure whether there were any boundary conditions, like people ordering food in a group. And that's exactly where I went wrong. There's also a system where people will start a discussion on a channel in Slack for ordering food together to save on delivery charges. This food is kept on the said table too, so that people can come pick it up when they want. And the idiot that I am, I picked up someone's order without thinking.
2. The distil-your-information-razor: Ruminate on what you want to say for a bit. Even if you instantly need to answer a question, quickly review in your head which aspects of the information are really essential to be communicated at the time. Verbosity is the worst when it comes to official communication. Even though they may say it multiple times, your boss and your senior colleagues are -NOT- your close friends. They have other people and their own social life to look at, so if you ramble on with unnecessary information, not just does it annoy them, it also dilutes the essence of your intention. When people think you're not trying to waste their time, it builds trust much quicker.
3. The compress-your-information-razor: Now this is more of a complex razor. For one, it relies on shared knowledge of language, terminology and jargon. If you try to express an elaborate idea by its niche title but the other person hasn't really heard of it then it's useless. If the language you're comfortable in is not the same they are, then compressing information is useless. However, even when introducing intentional errors and redundancy, one should keep in mind that its the necessary errors and redundancy that are brought in.
Why do you "need" errors?
Coming to work overseas (actually even before that), one can encounter people who aren't comfortable with some language, for instance English. So if you don't try to match your grammar and sentence structure with what they expect, even if their expected structure is incorrect, then communication becomes choppy and annoying. Better to do-as-the-romans-do.
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