Hard for me to tell you this

Communication is hard! Software is supposed to help, but it often gets in the way.

How can we orient our software to the way people communicate to make us more effective? I find it easier to break this up into parts. It all starts with the message.

The message must be clear – or nothing else matters.

However, even a clear message can fail to transmit when it violates one of these four (often unspoken) norms of communication.

Wrong Medium
Wrong Audience
Wrong Context
Wrong Timing

Diagram titled "The 4 components of effective communication" showing four sliders — Medium (Too Casual to Too Rich), Audience (Too Few to Too Many), Context (Too Little to Too Much), and Timing (Too Soon to Too Late) — each centered on a green "Just Right" zone flanked by red "Bad" zones

Medium

Most of us know not to fire people over Slack. That would be callous because Slack is a casual medium.

On the flip side, people complain about attending “meetings that could have been an email.” Meetings are a very high-fidelity channel, whereas text and chat are low-fidelity.

Audience

Has anyone been part of a reply-all disaster? My second favorite person in this scenario is the one who corrects the person who replied all (by replying all). My all-time favorite person is the one who says, “You did it, too” by replying all AGAIN. Messages fail to transmit when the wrong people are on the thread.

Context

A clear message must be accompanied by clear expectations on how the audience should respond. Should they edit this? Digest this? Approve this? What’s the call to action?

Timing

Someone asks you to review a document and says the submission deadline is noon today. The timestamp is 11:45 a.m. This message is clear, but it is much, much too late.

What am I missing?

I’m still workshopping this, and I’d love your feedback. Does this resonate with you? Have you experienced similar communication violations?

Media Richness Theory

Media Richness Theory suggests that mediums exist on a continuum of low richness to high fidelity—the more complicated the message, the richer the medium you need to transmit it successfully.

Curve plotting "Medium richness" against "Complexity of the message", with iMessage, Slack, Gmail, Google Docs, phone, Zoom, and in-person meetings arranged from lowest to highest richness

A text message is low richness, and a face-to-face meeting is high fidelity.

Does your organization have rules of thumb for when to use each medium for different types of communication, or is it a free-for-all?

(I know some of you are email deviants with overflowing inboxes. If you can’t keep up with your inbox, this blog post could help.)

Like a video chat, but on my own time

I’ve been using Loom a lot over the last few years, and it’s drastically improved the way I communicate with others.

It’s a short-form video tool designed for screen sharing and presentations. It’s perfect for describing concepts that are difficult to articulate in an email without the hassle of syncing with busy schedules.

I love Loom because it adds a new medium to the Media Richness Theory graph—it is richer than an email but not as rich as a Zoom call.

The same medium-richness curve with Loom added between phone and Zoom, marked by an orange arrow showing where the asynchronous video tool slots in

Here’s an example of a Loom video I created about automating CRM cleanup using AI. (My new favorite analogy is using AI as a “Roomba for your CRM.”)

Consider spending 15 minutes this week trying Loom. It’s free for up to 25 videos, and if you really like it, they offer a 75% discount to nonprofits.

I’m not an affiliate or anything; I just like good software.

Until next time,

Ted