Poor communication: the worst scapegoat ever done

It's one of the biggest excuses for every problem or failure to do this correctly. Everyone loves to wrap their failures into the warm blanket of the word "poor communication," but it can not be discerned by clear-eyed people.

For the past 10 years, I've worked with people from all over the world. The United States, Israel, Romania, Britain, Canada, India, Singapore ... In the perfect world, we should all be able to communicate in our own language, but in reality we all speak English, but this does not prevent everyone from perfectly understanding each other.

If you understand others in your daily conversation, "poor communication" is a pale excuse.

The main features of successful communication are fairness and responsibility. If you want others to sacrifice time, you also have to sacrifice yourself. If you want each other to complete the task on time, you have to do so.

For example, Visually part of R & D team in Romania. The time difference between San Francisco and Romania is 10 hours. It is easy to say that this may lead to slow or poor performance.

In fact, this is not uncommon: "Things never work if they do not sit next to me and react to the situation right away."

This is just a cheap excuse. We know that the Romanians have already done so before we start our work.

If problems or pending issues require proper communication, all you have to do is wait a few hours (or get up early) before going to bed, to ensure that the two parties can talk during each other's working hours. In this way, you can sleep well with the confidence that things can be resolved on time.

As in the example above, if you do not want to take precautionary measures, you can email and go to bed early - but close your eyes and think about it for a while, knowing that you can not get things done. You're just kidding ... Oh, maybe in a matter of days you'll find yourself using the word "poor communication."

If you work with someone in the same time zone or even in the same office, there is no reason to look for such an excuse.

So, why do people trying to communicate encounter problems? The real answer is: 1) They screw things up! Or 2) You messed up! Things like this. Excuses to evade responsibility or find "miscommunication" are easy.

If you really wish for success, you have to make sure that you understand the co-workers at a very basic level of language (if you can not, that is another question). Then you need to make sure you have the right people - people you can depend on. You have to make sure that you are not messed up (or that they are not messed up). If you screw things up, the best remedy is to figure out where you got it wrong and who is responsible for it.

An example of a miscommunication that can never be used as an excuse is the Visual.ly Marketplace. When our completely online Visual.ly project started to shut down, some questioned how it could connect customers with designers, animators, reporters and developers, and then had to work with people who either did not know each other or no longer in the same time zone or location The case of successful collaboration.

The answer is simple - the tools developed by our project center will be forced to be fair to both parties. Clients rely on our creative talent to meet their deadlines on time, or have them change if needed, and our creative staff also knows that the customer has a corresponding responsibility to provide a creative outline and brand guidance right from the start and at Constant feedback on the project. Once both parties to the deal have done their part, the project goes smoothly and yields fruitful results, and the communication between them is even less than what the client expected.

So next time you have a problem, stop scapegoat communication. Uncover the real culprit it.