019 This month’s tip:

Communications takes time.

The other articles in this issue are exploring human communications in different ways, but this tip is perhaps the most important of all. When communications is seen as an event, instead of a process, it will always fail.

Sadly, that's often how communications is treated in large organizations. Very good initiatives are launched for very good reasons, bringing real benefits to their community. But those affected are only informed after the fact, in ways that generate fear or suspicion instead of enthusiasm. Even a well-crafted, powerful communiqué will fall over if it's only issued once. People need to be coaxed along a kind of learning curve, from awareness to understanding.

You can't get good results if you don't plan communications as a process, and let it develop over time.
 

March 2005 - Volume 3, Issue 3

First, Get their Attention

At some point in our lives, we've all faced the terror of the blank page. We have a story to tell, or a case to make; we have ideas to put across. But we can't find a way to get started.

One approach is to apply a preexisting rhetorical structure, and a good one to use is the "Motivated Sequence" originated by Alan Monroe in the late 1920's. Monroe posited a five-step sequence, in which each step fulfilled a particular purpose:

1. Attention -- to catch the ears (or eyes) of your audience and secure its good will; funny is good here.
2. Need -- to position things in the context of a problem to be solved; you want your audience to agree that the status quo isn't all it could be.
3. Satisfaction -- to present your ideas about the solution; this is where you can make the most effective use of hard data and expert testimony.
4. Visualization -- to help your audience see how the solution would make things better; the key here is to make them envision it, and want it to happen.
5. Action -- to motivate your audience to do something; here, you want a sense of closure, as well as clarity about what happens next.

The motivated sequence is still taught in basic speech classes, and the link above is from course materials at the University of Colorado. Studies have also shown that presenting information this way does lead to better comprehension and more successful outcomes. It may seem to be simpler to focus on step three, since that's where the core of the logical argument will be made. In fact, though, people are more likely to be won over if they're helped along through all five steps. People want more than a logical argument -- it's that process thing.

It’s Not Your Mother’s PowerPoint

In the corporate world, Microsoft's PowerPoint is probably the most popular tool for the general packaging of ideas; it may also be one of the biggest obstacles to effective communications. There's a common sense appeal in the idea of breaking down a concept into smaller chunks, and it at least seems that turning your ideas into bulleted lists could help get them across. The problem is that this kind of reductionism is completely at odds with telling a story, and it's through storytelling that people are most apt to accept and understand new information.

So, while the organizing principles of PowerPoint may do more harm than good, it's still a great tool. It's easy to use, easy to learn and gives you a lot of control over just about everything that can happen within the confines of a computer screen. It can bring together words and pictures and sounds in surprising and engaging ways, as long as you pick the right elements. Your audience may have developed some knee-jerk resistance to it (the "not another PowerPoint" syndrome), but it offers three real advantages. It's fast, it's cheap and it's everywhere.

At K Street, we've used PowerPoint in some interesting ways. It’s supported an interactive "sales kit" for a large consulting company -- a kind of Web-Site in a Box that included sub-presentations, brochures, case studies and other sales tools. We've used it to develop self-paced training materials for a network of adolescent drop-in centers. Most recently, we used PowerPoint as a tool for prototyping what would ultimately be executed as a Flash presentation at a client's website. In that application, we were able to test drive many combinations of wording and animation and image layouts, letting our clients participate actively in the evolution of the piece.

In an earlier Directions, we plugged the "Beyond Bullets" blog of Cliff Atkinson, who last month published his own PowerPoint vision in book form. He shares our sense of knowledge transfer as storytelling, and PowerPoint as a kind of scriptwriting vehicle. He's got a lot of good, simple tricks, too. We're not recommending the book at this point, but his blog is still worth a bookmark.

How the Wikipedia Works

In the October 2004 issue of Directions, we ran an article about the Wikipedia, an Internet encyclopedia that's built on a particular type of collaborative software. Wikis allow open editing by anyone who comes along, which seems an odd choice as the foundation for a general compendium of knowledge. It's hard to imagine how a wiki could support an encyclopedia, without being torn apart by politics, differences of opinion or general vandalism.

To explore that question, InfoWorld Analyst Jon Udell developed a "screen cast" showing how the Wikipedia actually works. It follows the timeline of an entry (about Heavy Metal Umlauts, in fact), which grows from a single sentence to a respectable article in just under two years. It will take you about 8 minutes to watch the whole thing, but you'll be surprised how quickly it goes. It's sort of fascinating, and ends with the very hopeful observation that explicit knowledge really can be created by a "loose, worldwide federation of volunteers." You can watch Udell's screen cast through your browser. You need speakers, and a broadband connection wouldn't hurt.

And, if you're interested in the business of technology, you might be interested to know that Google has its eyes on the Wikipedia, too.

The Laws of Osmo Wiio

This article began with an entirely different idea in mind, which is how it goes sometimes. Our original concept was to present some statistics on the impact of failed communications, but in researching that topic we came across the writings of Osmo Wiio. Wiio is a professor at the University of Helsinki, who's credited with creating ten laws of human communications. They are written in a humorous, "Murphy's Law" way, but if you're involved in this kind of work, you'll know they are more true than not.

Wiio's first law is "Communication usually fails, except by accident." That may seem a bleak assessment, but it's worth keeping in mind. It's a way to recognize the tremendous challenges posed by individual differences in communication styles, attention spans, language skills and cultural backgrounds. Add the technological issues that can jumble electronic messages and it's amazing people communicate at all.

Jukka Korpela, another Finnish academic, has published a good commentary on Wiio's laws, and it should be required reading for anyone involved in human communications. A personal favorite: "The more we communicate, the faster misunderstandings propagate."

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