
U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Lem Torres and a young boy are lifted to safety from the roof of the child's flooded home in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The confusion in the management of the Katrina disaster will be studied for years. Much of it is probably traceable to the mismatch between the lengths of communications loops and the pace of the unfolding disaster. For instance, there is video of officials offering assessments that had been contradicted by actual video shown earlier in the same broadcast. The Katrina incident demonstrates that the critical parameter is not the length of a communication loop. Rather, it is the relationship between the pace of events and the loop length. During some phases of a project, loop length might be a little frustrating, but certainly not damaging. Yet, during other phases of the same project, the same loop length can be a severe project risk. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Manuel J. Martinez.
Much collaboration today takes place between people who are unable to converse freely or conveniently. Because people are so busy, and so often separated by multiple time zones, the time required for a response to a question can be very frustrating. This is the long-loop conversational environment. Even a simple question can yield only another question in response. For instance, the first response to "When do you think you'll finish planting the rose bed?" might be, "Which rose bed do you mean?"
The trouble arises because the customary patterns of real time conversation are incompatible with the long-loop environment. Here are some effective tactics for asking questions in the long-loop environment.
- Be ridiculously specific
- Specificity reduces the likelihood that the responder will need further clarification. Avoid pronouns and generic terms such as "the rose bed" — instead, say, "Rose bed 3G on the south lawn."
- But specificity entails risk. For instance, in the question above, if the asker meant to type "3G" but accidentally typed "3H," specificity would have resulted in at least one otherwise unnecessary loop traversal. Specific questions must be accurate. Proofread them twice.
- Ask structured compound questions
- In a real time conversation we can ask a series of questions, using each response to frame the next question. That approach is fastest in the real time environment because it avoids the clutter of unnecessary or poorly framed questions. But in the long-loop environment it can be maddeningly slow.
- A structured compound question is actually a set of related questions, connected by a logical framework. An example: "If the answer to A is X, then I would ask B. If the answer to A is Y, then I would ask C. If the answer to A is anything else, then I would ask D." Asking structured compound questions can reduce the number of loop traversals.
- Explain why you need to know
- If you're Trouble arises because the customary
patterns of real time conversation
are incompatible with the
long-loop environmentasking a question, describe in detail the consequences of not knowing the answer. Motivate your correspondent to respond fully, accurately, and soon. - When the responder knows why you're asking, a wonderful thing sometimes happens. Suppose the asker is confused about something, and suppose that the asker's explanation of the need for the answer exposes that confusion. The responder might then be able to untangle the confusion. The time saved in this way might be far more than one or two loop traversals. The confusion avoided might have been much, much more expensive.
Discuss these methods with your correspondents before using them. Questions like these can seem strange, or even insulting, to anyone who hasn't seen their like before. And disrupted relationships can be even more costly than a few loop traversals. Next in this series Top
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Is your organization a participant in one or more global teams? Are you the owner/sponsor of a global team? Are you managing a global team? Is everything going well, or at least as well as any project goes? Probably not. Many of the troubles people encounter are traceable to the obstacles global teams face when building working professional relationships from afar. Read 303 Tips for Virtual and Global Teams to learn how to make your global and distributed teams sing. Order Now!
For more suggestions for the long-loop environment, see "Long-Loop Conversations: Clearing the Fog," Point Lookout for June 24, 2009; and "Long-Loop Conversations: Anticipation," Point Lookout for August 12, 2009.
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Communication at Work:
Virtual Communications: II
- Participating in or managing a virtual team presents special communications challenges. Here's Part
II of some guidelines for communicating with members of virtual teams.
Achieving Goals: Inspiring Passion and Action
- Achieving your goals requires both passion and action. Knowing when to emphasize passion and when to
emphasize action are the keys to managing yourself, or others, toward achievement.
Start the Meeting with a Check-In
- Check-ins give meeting attendees a chance to express satisfaction or surface concerns about how things
are going. They're a valuable aid to groups that want to stay on course, or get back on course when needed.
The Major Annoyance of Mini-Digressions
- Digressions are expensive. They limit progress in meetings. They're most noticeable when they deflect
the entire meeting from its stated purpose. There is another kind of digression that's less noticeable,
more common, and just as costly.
When You Feel Attacked
- Verbal attacks might be upsetting, but in creative conflicts they're usually permissible if related
to substantive matters. When verbal attacks are personal, they can be unfair and illegitimate. The ability
to recenter yourself quickly is invaluable.
See also Effective Communication at Work, Project Management and Virtual and Global Teams for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming February 1: The Big Power of Little Words
- Big, fancy words, like commensurate or obfuscation, tend to be more noticed than the little everyday words, like yet or best. That might be why the little words can be so much more powerful, steering conversations where their users want them to go. Available here and by RSS on February 1.
And on February 8: Kerfuffles That Seem Like Something More
- Much of what we regard as political conflict is a series of squabbles commonly called kerfuffles. They captivate us while they're underway, but after a month or two they're forgotten. Why do they happen? Why do they persist? Available here and by RSS on February 8.
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