Communication

I’m sure most of us have heard of “Buzzword Bingo” and some have probably played it a time or too. It’s a fun game that should get people thinking about their communication style…and it appears that Oracle’s PR people should have looked into it prior to releasing their latest press release. Here’s the first paragraph of the release:

Oracle today introduced Oracle(r) Communications IP Service and Network Management, a new market offering designed to simplify the lifecycle management of complex IP-based services. This offering enables communications service providers to manage growing IP service complexity, scale operations efficiently and facilitate ongoing network change by providing one integrated solution for IP service management and network change control. Included in the offering are updated versions of two key Oracle Service Fulfillment Suite applications, Oracle Communications Configuration Management and Oracle Communications IP Service Activator.

If you were playing the technical version of Buzzword Bingo, you probably would have won!

I think what Oracle is trying to say is “hey guys…we have a new product that manages your IP service offerings and helps you get a grasp of the complex nature of these services”. I think.
Ben Worthen at WSJ’s Business Technology blog pointed me to this press release. He agrees that there is way to much ‘Gobbledygook’ in this press release. Apparently, some of the snide comments directed at Ben disagree…a few people mention that since this product is targeted at technical people it’s OK to use technical mumbo-jumbo and buzzwords…but I disagree. If you can’t communicate the value of a product in a clear and concise language, then perhaps you don’t truly understand the value of that product (or there is no value in the product).Leave the technical language and other terminology for tech specs, manuals or white papers.

Did anyone get a bingo from Oracle’s press release? If so, let me know

Technorati Tags: communication, buzzword bingo, Business Technology

I’m always amazed how to hard it is for some people/firms to understand that communication is a major reason for project success or failure.

For example, on one of the projects I’m working on now is a content management system implementation. My role is as overall program manager responsible for managing internal and external resources as well as managing the vendor relationship.

The vendor was in town a few weeks ago to work with the client to develop requirements for the initial phase. Their plan was to return to their office and get a proposal (including project plans) to the client the following week. When the vendor left, everyone was quite happy with their work and felt very comfortable with their ability to do the job at hand.

The following week we heard nothing from the vendor. Not a peep other than the occasional reply to an email sent from me or my client.

The end of the week came and went with no proposal or project plan and no communication from them. The client started getting very nervous and started asking questions like ‘are they doing anything’ and ‘did they forget about us’. Phone calls and emails to the vendor were left unanswered.

After a few days the client decided to make the call to the vendor’s VP of Sales to find out what was going on. She said ‘we got busy with a few other projects but we are making progress on yours’….this small simple explanation was all it took to ease the mind of my client.

The moral of the story:

The simple act of sending a quick email or making a short call to your client can really do a lot to set their mind at ease. This simple act makes them understand that you are working on their project and progress is being made.

I don’t understand why more people don’t do the easy yet critical step of keeping in regular contact with clients.

Technorati Tags: Communications, Project Management

I’ve been re-reading “Clients for Life” by Jagdish Sheth and Andrew Sobel and saw a very nice piece of advice about ensuring that your message to your clients and potential clients is heard and remembered. The book, which is very good and has been on my recommended reading list for quite some time, has a chapter (#5) titled “The Big Picture” that provides a nice discussion on helping clients see ‘the big picture’ as well as how to see that picture yourself. In the chapter, the topic of presenting information to clients is discussed and a few examples on messaging are given.

Sheth and Sobel state that most people are “only able to absorb and remember three main points from a discussion or presentation” (Clients for Life, p. 123). Because of this, it is key to keep messaging as short and simple (without being simplistic) as possible. The authors provide a nice easy reminder for helping us to focus on our messaging with the following:

Before any client meeting or presentation, ask yourself: if someone encounters my client in a week and asks him what we said today, how would I like him to respond? What are the main points I want him to remember? (Clients for Life, p. 124)

These are some nice questions to ask yourself while you prep for a presentation or client meeting. I think they’re probably just as good for writers to use when writing a new post/article as they should help to focus the message…and I know I need help focusing my posts sometimes!
There are many very good blogs/authors that dive into this topic in more detail. They are:

• Presentation Zen
• Seth Godin
• Signal vs Noise
• Steve Neiderhauser

Technorati Tags: Communications, Clear messaging, Clients for Life

As a follow-up to my post titled “The Problem(s) with Linear Thinking“, I had the intention of writing a post to share some thoughts on Critical & Creative Thinking….but I got hung up on some of the wordy and academic definitions that exist for Critical Thinking.

The most famous (or infamous?) is the definition from Dr. Peter Facione’s “The Delphi Report” (Feel free to skip this entire definition…you won’t miss anything):

We understand critical thinking (CT) to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based. CT is essential as a tool of inquiry. As such, CT is a liberating force in education and a powerful resource in one’s personal and civic life. While not synonymous with good thinking, CT is a pervasive and self-rectifying human phenomenon. The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters,diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria,focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit. Thus, educating good critical thinkers means working toward this ideal. It combines developing CT skills with nurturing those dispositions which consistently yield useful insights and which are the basis of a rational and democratic society.

Wow…178 words to define Critical Thinking. Am I the only person in the world who finds that to be a long and academic definition?

Another definition, provided by The Critical Thinking Community, is a little longer but provides an even better definition:

Critical thinking is that mode of thinking-about any subject, content,or problem-in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking.

The above definition is 38 words and communications the ideas behind Critical Thinking in a concise manner.

An even shorter definition is provided by Steven D. Schafersman, who writes that:

Critical thinking is the ability to think for one’s self and reliably and responsibly make those decisions that affect one’s life.

I am a big fan of being succinct, and I think Steven has captured the defintion of CT in a perfectly succinct manner using 21 words.

Does the 178 word definition from Dr. Facione really say anything more than this 21 word definition? The definition by Dr. Facione is probably considered by many academics to be the ‘perfect’ definition of CT, but I think most non-academics wouldn’t read past the first sentence.

The inability (or unwillingness) of people to communicate in a succinct manner always amazes me.

Technorati Tags: Critical Thinking, Succinct Communication

I was researching the term “servant leader” today and ran across a few quotes from Robert Greenleaf, the man credited with coining that phrase. The quote that stood out (and funnily enough has little to do with servant leadership) was found on Viterbo University’s Servant Leadership Blog and is quoted below (from the December 13 post titled “The veritable babel of communication“):

We live in a veritable babel of communication, much of it originated by hucksters in pursuit of a fast buck rather than by those who carefully weigh what is important to say. Far too much of it is put forth by plausible, intelligent, and articulate people who are both entertaining and titillating, but whose words do not leave an impact of pithy*, significant ideas.

The quote got me to thinking about the blogosphere and the many millions of people who are blogging (myself included) and how much real information is really being disseminated through those blogs. There are a few blogs that I read on a regular basis that provide significant value to me by making me think about new things, challenging my views/opinions and/or providing new information that I hadn’t previously considered. There are also a lot of blogs that I occasionally read but don’t provide a lot of value and/or information to me (or to other readers?) and I wonder what the real purpose of those blogs are. I wonder which camp my blog falls into (hopefully the one that provides information to readers)?

In the same blog post on the Servant Leadership Blog, the question is asked:

Do we carefully weigh what is important to say? Do our words leave an impact of pithy*, significant ideas? If not, then why are we speaking?

This is a powerful question for a person (blogger or not) to ask themselves when communicating with others and one that I will be asking myself continuously going forward.

* Note: I assume that ‘pithy’ is being used to mean “Precisely meaningful; forceful and brief” - Definition from Answers.com - http://www.answers.com/topic/pithy

Technorati Tags: Servant Leader, Communication