The USS Indianapolis on July 10, 1945, off Mare Island. Mare Island (which is actually a peninsula), in California, was the site of a US Naval shipyard. On July 26, the Indianapolis delivered to a base on Tinian, parts of the bomb known as Little Boy, which would be used against Hiroshima. She then left for Guam, and after departing Guam, she was attacked and sunk by a Japanese submarine. She did send distress calls, three of which were received, but which were tragically ignored, because one commander was drunk, another had left orders not to be disturbed and a third thought the message was a Japanese prank. Over 300 of her crew of 1196 died in the attack, and of the 880 who went into the water, all but 317 were lost to sharks. For years after the sinking, the Navy maintained that no distress calls had been sent because the ship had been cruising in radio silence. Her commander, Captain Charles Butler McVay III, survived and was rescued, only to be court-martialed and convicted of "hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag." His sentence was remitted and he was returned to active duty, retiring in 1949. Still, disgraced, he committed suicide in 1968.
Even though the distress calls were received by three separate stations, all three failed to act on them properly. Redundancy as a strategy for maintaining communications reliability is not always adequate to the task. Photo courtesy U.S. Department of the Navy, U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command.
When the closed-loop response time between you and a distant correspondent is a half-day or more, communication can feel like a frustrating hindrance to progress. But anticipating the little problems that arise in complex conversations can make discussions far more productive. In the long-loop environment, preventing problems in conversations takes a lot less effort than fixing them.
What must be anticipated is sometimes far from obvious. Here are some examples.
- Anticipate anxiety about message delivery
- Both recipients and senders can become anxious about delivery, especially when the messages travel in unreliable media such as the Internet. Moreover, in crisis environments, important messages can go unnoticed in the crush of other traffic.
- Establish protocols about acknowledging message arrival. Protocol tiers that depend on the level of urgency of the communication environment are especially helpful.
- Anticipate misunderstanding
- Long-loop conversations often cross cultural or linguistic boundaries, which enhances the risk of misunderstandings. But even within one culture and language, the long-loop environment limits not only the exchanges that focus on the immediate task, but also those intended to clarify ambiguity or complexity in the conversation itself.
- Assume that misunderstandings will occur. Be generous with detailed examples of the points made in your conversations. Avoid the little tactics we all use from time to time to conceal our own limited knowledge or understanding.
- When the message is urgent, go slow
- The probability When the conversation
is urgent, the only way
to communicate fast
is slowlyof misunderstanding escalates with the urgency of the conversation, because people tend to take less care in their communications. - When the conversation is urgent, the only way to communicate fast is slowly.
- Anticipate politics
- Organizational politics influences the ongoing work of most collaborations. Even though two organizations might be contractually bound to collaborate, opinions about the wisdom of the choice to collaborate can vary. Moreover, people often have conflicting commitments, and priorities do tend to change with time.
- Consider political phenomena when formulating risk plans. Politics can be destructive or constructive, but even when constructive, there can be costs, some of which might fall unevenly on different organizational efforts. The effects of organizational politics on your own effort will be less harmful if you remain alert to this possibility. Keep a clear head, free of anger and frustration, when political interference does occur.
Finally, and paradoxically, anticipate the unexpected mishap. Even though we can't know what specific unexpected mishap might occur, we can be fairly certain that some unexpected mishap will occur. When significant unexpected events happen, we usually feel that they happen at the worst time. In reality, significant unexpected mishaps do happen at all times, but we notice them only when resources are inadequate to address them. In the long-loop environment, communication, the one resource that's most important for dealing with unexpected mishaps, is almost always inadequate. 
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For more about the sinking of the Indianapolis see Charles Maier, "For the Good of the Navy," in Insight on the News, June 5, 2000.
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Communication at Work:
Believe It or Else- When we use threats and intimidation to win debates or agreement, we lay a flimsy foundation for future
action. Using fear may win the point, but little more.
Four Overlooked Email Risks: II- Email exchanges are notorious for exposing groups to battles that would never occur in face-to-face
conversation. But email has other limitations, less-often discussed, that make managing dialog very
difficult. Here's Part II of an exploration of some of those risks.
Remote Hires: Communications- When knowledge-oriented organizations hire remote workers, success is limited by the communications
facilities they provide. Remote hires need phones, computers, email, text, video, calendars, and more.
Communications infrastructure drives productivity.
Formulaic Utterances: I- With all due respect is an example of a category of linguistic forms known as formulaic
utterances. They differ across languages and cultures, but I speculate that their functions are
near universal. In the workplace, using them can be constructive — or not.
Straw Man Variants- The Straw Man fallacy is a famous rhetorical fallacy. Using it distorts debate and can lead groups to
reach faulty conclusions. It's readily recognized, but it has some variants that are more difficult
to spot. When unnoticed, trouble looms.
See also Effective Communication at Work and Effective Communication at Work for more related articles.
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