Ian Daniel Stewart

I love this passage from Arnie Lund’s tome on User Experience Management. I think it’s really important to consider. Especially if you lead in a distributed organization.

We perceive information via three channels:
– Visual (60%)
– Audio (30%)
– and Semantic (10%).

When we share information via e-mail or any other sharing tool, it is perceived only via semantic channel which is usually not sufficient.

That is why it is wise to duplicate orally at least some data that have been shared in written form, and to provide visual support for audio information. Distant communication is less vivid than live, so we have to be more careful with jokes, avoid using slang, and so forth.

It is also more difficult to jump from one topic to another, therefore it is recommended to discuss issues and summarize after each of them.

(Passage lightly edited by me to up the visual support.)

Working in a 100% distributed organization I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a lack of duplication hurt communication. I’m come that conclusion because I’m pretty sure because I’ve seen it happen with myself in the past! It’s something I try and work on improving in my role as a leader.

What could this look like if we really pushed it? I tried to take this out a bit further when thinking about it with an extreme example of what that duplication could look like. A religious organization. Consider a church.

How many sermons or homilies are delivered every week around the world? Backed by how many books? Letters? Essays? Paintings and iconography? That level of duplication and variation on a theme is something you want in your toolkit if you’re going to maintain an idea and a community for millennia. (It sounds a bit like a science-fiction story when I think of it that way.)

Bringing that back to my day to day it makes me wonder: what could alignment look like for a year-level project if we applied a millennia-level alignment tool to it? If you made a practice of ensuring a concept or a plan was understood, example by example, week by week, month by month, channel by channel?

I’m not suggesting we go out and start practicing iconography and toiling at an illuminated manuscript. But consider the value in visual aids, support for ideas via a quick video demonstration, a regular review of important “whys” via a voice or video call, and, most importantly, a willingness to duplicate a message.