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Nice article. Enlightening.
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And nice conversation / debate below 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Hi, no, I didn't read it but I will add it to my to read list. Thank you a lot! 
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The constraint of communication discussed in this article is "time".
However, "what" is communicated is much more important than "how long" it takes in the communication.
It brings no benefit if the message conveyed to others is mistakenly understood. If is dangerous if the message is partially communicated.
Timing the process is easy.
Ensuring the quality is difficult.
Understanding what is important to communicate, and the essential of the mutual understanding to achieve is sometimes challenging. When time is limited, what mutual understanding should be gain at least? When the communication is out of track, how can we efficiently realize that and return to the right track?
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Hi again 
True, ensuring quality is difficult. Quality is anyway more related to the audience and how good is message (content) prepared for them. If some participants does not have needed knowledge of the domain then I see two possibilities:
1. Rethink if they should participate at all
2. Prepare / adjust content for them. Maybe provide them additional and explanation or something like that.
wmjordan wrote: When time is limited, what mutual understanding should be gain at least?
If time is limited and it is not possible to extend the meeting then you don't have any other choice than try to do the good meeting wrap up. Good wrap up, together with meeting minutes should guarantee to some degree that everyone have same understanding. Of course, there will often be leftovers such as open questions and disagreement. Those leftovers should be tackled in following meeting.
wmjordan wrote: When the communication is out of track, how can we efficiently realize that and return to the right track?
I strongly believe that every meeting should have agenda and moderator (usually meeting owner). Moderator is responsible for directing the flow of the meeting and communication. He need to understand when discussion is going off topic and (politely) redirect it back to the agenda. Of course, in reality will happen that new topics will pop up. Then you need to decide if you want to tackle this topic right now or you can discuss it afterward (or even in separated meeting). It is important to keep communication clear as possible and I can guarantee you that mixing multiple topics at same time will end with great confusion
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wmjordan wrote:
When time is limited, what mutual understanding should be gain at least?
The main thing here is wrong prioritization. If some procedure or schedule interferes with the development, ditch that procedure!
1. Rethink if they should participate at all
2. Prepare / adjust content for them. Maybe provide them additional and explanation or something like that.
I would say, first things first. First of all, we need to think if we need a meeting at all, and only then about the participation of particular members. One issue I met in the past and managed to fix in other cases is majorly redundant meetings. First of all, unprepared meetings. Some people tend to call for a meeting just because it's Thursday, it is on schedule. The meeting about nothing should simply never exist. People need to know the exact agenda in advance. The one who calls for a meeting should have a convincing goal for it. The talks like “Okay guys, how are you doing? Let's go around the table.” can be only one part of the meeting. Failure to talk about real business makes people frustrated, boring and demotivated, it should never happen. Those empty-minded meetings show the imitation of work instead of work.
As to the individual participants of the meetings, I almost always tend to shift focus: fewer meetings for a big team, and more talks between two or three individuals. It may seem that it is a waste of time, because you may need to repeat the same things, and so on. No, in fact, it depends. What's the use of the saved time on a big meeting if people cannot get a good understanding because of too many distractions? You save time once, but later waste a lot more time by raising the same issue again and again. On the other hand, the other problem is pure awareness of each other's work. So, the solution is always the proper balance.
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
modified 9-Aug-23 0:00am.
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Well said.
I am also considering promoting the "small talks" between two or three individuals in my company and compress big meetings.
We used to hold weekly meetings that all department managers and vice managers took part in them and discussed cross department problems. However, those problems usually could be solved between two departments (two or three managers discussing, general managers hearing) and the other managers (more than ten) had to sit there and wait, or work with their laptops or smart phones. So the time efficiency is X/(X+Y), where X approximately 2 and (X+Y) could be 15 or so.
The efficiency of such kind of meetings is mostly just for the general managers who are always concentrated. They can be there and listen to or ask each department managers, one by one. For managers, this kind of meetings are mostly time-killers.
modified 11-Aug-23 21:15pm.
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Thank you.
Agree. In addition to killing time, an even worse possible issue could be frustration or distractions interfering at the wrong moments. But time efficiency is not something just arithmetical when creative work is involved. The ideal way the organization can help developers is to let them manage their time themselves, as much as possible.
At the same time, it's a good idea to promote communication between departments. The common problem is isolation, when, say, marketing has a poor idea of the product being marketed, and especially its future, and engineers have a poor idea of how different things or features are perceived by the customers.
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov wrote: The common problem is isolation, when, say, marketing has a poor idea of the product being marketed, and especially its future, and engineers have a poor idea of how different things or features are perceived by the customers.
There was a case, that I encountered last week, which reflected a very severe problem of isolation.
The sales department thought that existing products provided by the company were all faulty and the requirements that they gathered from the market was almost ignored by the company and the development department was developing something secretly that could be sold without sales representatives, or not by the sales department at least. They were "doomed to be disposed" someday.
From the view of the development department, they complained the requirements gathered were mostly from individual users, not universal enough. Each time they developed a feature from their requests, the customer was fulfilled. And the customer might be the only customer. If not the only one, it was the one of the few. They felt unproductive. And they thought that no one in the sales department was willing or able to learn, understand, promote and improve their new products. "If you think it a mystery, it is a mystery".
Maybe this can be the most ridiculous case that you have ever read.
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wmjordan wrote: Maybe this can be the most ridiculous case that you have ever read.
I whish it was... 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Thank you for sharing. I think the most ridiculous case you described is both pathological and interesting.
At the same time, without getting to the root cause of why people thought these ways, the examples remain, well, mysterious. I'm not saying it would be easy to analyze, I just say that your description does not yet reveal things well enough to learn a lesson.
Can I get back to the original topic: communication? Once, a long time ago, I pictured some conversation from two sides of the business. Imagine we work as a development company, and one of our customers is also a company with engineers. A developer on our site shouts at imaginary engineers on the customer's side: “Who is that idiot who requested that?!” However, after the request was “satisfied”, it was pretty obvious that an engineer on the customer side would shout: “Who is that idiot who wrote that trash and pushed it to me?!” The reason for this clash was that two managers, one on our side, and another one on the customer side, stay in the communication chain and both were totally confident that they perfectly understand each other. You know, we have a children's game called “Broken phone”. By the way, this is an important socializing game: in the chain of people, an individual whispers some phrase created by the first one in the chain into the ear of the next one, and then they observe how the phrase was distorted, count some score, and so on. This is what it is, a “broken phone”.
And I was the one who tried to convince the real person, that developer on our side, that the entire story is... his responsibility: those managers are so bad only because you allow them to be so bad, you need to be absolutely assertive and speak up, instead of shouting something into a wall. By the way, the team left the salespeople behind on the next step.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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In the "most ridiculous case" mentioned above, while I was sitting aside and listening to among both department managers and their general manager, I tried to help them to figure out what was causing the misunderstanding. From their literal communication, oral communication, or even "silent communication" (yes, silence conveys message as well when people are facing each other) or "no communication", the root causes (plural form) could be quite complicated.
In short, those two departments shared little in common. They contributed little to each other. As the sales manager said, they wanted to help, but these two departments were in two companies.
Collaboration => unity. Unity => competitiveness. Competitiveness => extra revenue?
If the above formula works, so what is the obstacle to their collaboration? I will add more later.
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By the way, if I understand your “silent communication” correctly, the most widely accepted and proper terms in English are “nonverbal communication” and “body language”.
Probably, the most well-known and influential author on these topics is Australian expert Allan Pease. If you are interested and have a chance to read some of his books — I would recommend it as pretty interesting reading. And even practically useful.
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Today I sit among the managers in ridiculous case and listened to their meeting.
It seemed to me that they did not share any concept about product innovation, or they did not have a composite standard of product innovation procedure.
The general manager also added his forecast to the market which might shrink in the future and the sales manager agreed that they should find some way out, and an profitable innovative product that meet customer requirements could be the way.
Yet the standard still remained a mystery to them. They did not know how to figure out the standard and the suggestion of reading books were considered "ineffective", or they did not know what books to read--the managers said. To me, the problem about "standard" could have been broken down to smaller ones logically even without an development innovation knowledge. But they had already sunk themselves in the mud of problems for more than one year.
So, missing common concepts or standards could also cause ineffective communication. People who face the problem can see only their own part and then come up with a limited solution. For complex problems, partial views are not usually enough. A full view can help much more.
As Confucius, a Chinese educator and philosopher, who was born about two hundred years or so before Aristotle, remarked "Thinking without learning is dangerous". The ridiculous case above was an extra example of this motto. The pathological thoughts brew within each department almost tore the company apart.
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From what you say, I feel you are still focusing on the consequences and not the root cause, at least you did not get to it yet. Why do people have nothing in common? I cannot hear it yet (despite my long-term familiarity with Confucius). I am not saying you should always have the answer, just because it could be too difficult. We have a saying: “The soul of a stranger is darkness”.
I could emphasize a few usual reasons, not necessarily related to your example, and I cannot pretend to be comprehensive. First of all, I would note that the notions of “standard” and “innovation” contradict each other, but one thing doesn't deny another one. Standards are critically important but can be dangerous because real innovation always goes out of what is considered standard. The term “innovation procedure” also sounds suspicious, because one part of innovation is the creation of new procedures. Anyway, I'm talking not talking about standards and procedures themselves, which are essentially related to some kind of formalization. I'm talking about Procrustean bed. Moreover, I almost always could see one or another kind of Procrustean bed in all cases of organizational misconduct in general. Paradoxically, not only in the case of over-organization but even in the case of insufficient organization.
The second note: we are going out not only wrong communication but also wrong thinking.
Having these two notes for the preface, we are coming to the first reason for the lack of understanding: pattern-like thinking instead of critical thinking. It is like the brainless substitution of parameters in a formula instead of thinking about what the hell that formula means and what are the constraints of its usability. Unfortunately, pattern-like thinking is stimulated in schools pretty well.
The second possible reason is simply an overly confined culture of certain “specialists”, too narrow. Old fellow Confucius had his reasons to blame the failure of learning. Not only some people don't have learning habits, but they simply get irritated when they hear words they don't understand. Instead of trying to learn the language and related concepts, they blame the opposite party for being arrogant, “disconnected from reality”, “toxic”, and counterproductive — anything except admitting their own need to learn a bit and approach finding a common language with people of different thinking.
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov wrote: I feel you are still focusing on the consequences and not the root cause, at least you did not get to it yet. Why do people have nothing in common?
They did share something in common actually, the goal--to make their company more profitable and competitive.
However, they had different opinions on how to achieve that goal. Just as you have comment above, the sales persons have little idea about product development, and the engineers have little idea about how products are sold to the customers. They complained each other from their view point once again but did not began to work together.
The term “innovation procedure” need some clarification here. It was not mean to invent some new procedure when developing. It meant the common rules or routines they should follow from a beginning concept to massively promoted product on the market.
The detail of the story continues here.
Their business had been running there for more than ten years. However, for standardized product innovation, they were all new to it, almost innocent. The judgement of their being "new" mainly came from their "brute force development".
We are not monkeys. We are humans. The differences between humans and apes are that humans can share their knowledge and experience to others, learn from each other, and that humans manufacture and utilize tools (physical or cognitive ones). If we always "brute force", we are acting like monkeys.
New products were planned to be developed, yet it did not mean that there was no existing methodology or patterns they could employ or follow. For instance, Huawei had learned IPD (Integrated Product Development) from IBM and those type of management standards had successfully driven them to produce and invent many new products in various areas.
In case when they did not grasp any specific development approaches like IPD, agile innovation, lean startup, etc. it did not mean that the problems they encountered could not be broken down to smaller, but easier ones either. For instance, they could logically examine their plans and candidate products one by one with 5W1H, question tree, or more specifically by business model patterns, Porter's Five Forces, etc. They could also examine their current workflow (not literally written down yet) of product innovation procedure and check each step one by one.
What we have heard and seen is important. What we have not heard or seen is sometimes more important!
Why did they have so much time spend to fail one product and another product but not to learn?
Why did they have so much time spend to development and sale but were so mean to early analysis and planning?
Why did they have time to do their own job so desperately but not to discuss and dissect their goal together for more than one year until I urged them to, once and once again?
I asked them the above questions, they were silent. "Silent communication" was there once again, which could mean their confession, agreement, non-verbal disagreement, or thinking, etc. When this happens. Further questions could be made to clarify the silence. However, their answers might not reflect their inner thought. Their subsequent actions may explain better. I named this as "Behavioral communication"--the messages conveyed by what people do or do not do. This is more than "non-verbal/body language".
Had they done anything above for ever once together, they would complain each other less and collaborate more.
No pattern or methodology can ensure us to success, having known their limitations, and applying them carefully, some patterns are still better than no pattern at all.
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov wrote: Old fellow Confucius had his reasons to blame the failure of learning. Not only some people don't have learning habits, but they simply get irritated when they hear words they don't understand.
Nice! Thank you very much for that alert! Confucius also advised us not to be angry if others don't know. "Being angry" is a symptom of being "newbie" to enterprise coaching. I need to calm down, introduce those tools or patterns to them and help them find the reasons and answers themselves.
modified 11-Aug-23 0:05am.
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Thank you for your detailed clarifications. I feel they are very much in line with my own observations.
Note that having “little idea” is seemingly related to a kind of resistance, the lack of will of getting the ideas, probably related to the fear of leaving their comfort zones or something like that.
We are not monkeys. We are humans. And humans are monkeys, apes, period. This is a proper biological classification for our species. Look, human extreme anthropocentrism is one of the root sources of many fallacies of humankind, including wars and colonial exploitation. And top-level apes other than humans are already quite far from just brute force. And many people are still in the brute force domain. This fact even stronger reinforces the idea of criticizing anthropocentric views.
I do accept your notions of “silent communication” and “behavioral communication” as something more than nonverbal communication or body language. Thank you for this important clarification.
Confucius also advised us not to be angry if others don't know. I surely know. And it's a lot more when it comes to teaching, mentoring, and coaching. It is a lot about tons of patience and having a piece of mind.
“Being angry” is a symptom of being a “newbie” to enterprise coaching. Tell me about that! I would rather say, a good reason for complete disqualification.
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov wrote: probably related to the fear of leaving their comfort zones or something like that
Thank you for your help! Your inference sounds quite reasonable to me.
I just reviewed their conversations in my mind and tried to verify whether they were really in the comfort zone.
The sales manager's strategy was trying to maximize the value gained from existing customers with the so-call "new product". Yet, when the strategy was explained in details, old products were planned to meet requirements of "new customers" (if the goal is to bring more money to the company, this will still be viable in the upcoming a few years), but when being asked "what this 'new product' should be", the answer was not clear nor vivid. Some ways to gather information were provided, for instance, listening to complaints from users, looking for competitors' products according to users' feedback. However, the strategy left a lot aspects unexplained, such as at what time which product should be developed to meet what requirements from which kind of customers with what key features and how much revenue will be gained expectedly? If they hadn't the answer, how would they find it out?
The development manager's strategy was somewhat revised after a recent failure. The strategy was that multiple products would be developed almost simultaneously to fulfill some requirements from some orders of a certain customers, while the situations become favorable, the development and marketing rollout for the most promising candidate product would be boosted by putting more developers and money, and handing that product to the sales department at that time. Before "that time" comes, the sales department need not to get involved (no need to waste their time on promoting immature products). To contact the right customer without the sales department, they had employed a "project manager" last year, who was proven to have more knowledge of product innovation and better technical communication skills than any existing sales representatives. This strategy sounded more complete, but we could still easily raise questions about it within seconds and the answers to the following questions were unsure. How did they meet customers, by plan or by chance? Were those customers and their requirements typical enough that products built upon their orders could scale out to the big market? What were the "favorable" situations? How would they judge which product would be "promising"? If we dig more into the operations of their department, we would find some more questionable aspects, for instance, developing multiple products simultaneously or develop a single product (or two) only, which would be more productive? ...
Those two bunches of questions were really uncomfortable to them.
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov wrote: Tell me about that! I would rather say, a good reason for complete disqualification.
My opinions below.
Well, the "angry" might not be necessary being mad at the coached people.
It might just be mentally upset.
Control the feelings, try to find out why others don't understand, heuristically change our expressions with positive emotions and gestures may be the way out.
Having tried all kinds of methods, if the situation is critical and time is limited, being "angry" might still be a way. However, it should be very carefully and scarcely used.
Things are much easier said than done. I was educated by my affectionate parents and many excellent skillful teachers while I grew up with other kids. They had set very good examples for me. While I am about to feel angry, I should think of them.
modified 11-Aug-23 8:46am.
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Thank you for the reply. It's a good constructive reaction to a pretty trivial “comfort zone” idea and a good, interesting analysis.
Having tried all kinds of methods, if the situation is critical and time is limited, being “angry” might still be a way. Well, no, it shouldn't be the way, really. You see, maybe you keep in mind something a bit different.
I think anger is always bad, this is the weakness. But I don't say that some negative behavior should not be the way. A negative situation does require a negative reaction. But it should not be the anger. Even the idea of “controlling your emotions” is not perfect. Your emotion should not be suppressed. Ideally, one needs to analyze the emotion and develop some constructive “cold” course of action. As a side effect, it should also fix the emotions of the teacher and redirect them to the positive feeling of keeping the situation under control.
Well, I do understand that this is some advice that is too easy to give and way too hard to follow. Most of us are just not strong and smart enough to behave correctly and successfully in all cases.
At the same time, the denial of the validity of proper negative reactions is a big misconception. Sometimes, we (rather figuratively) consider it “Western”. I mean, all that permanent “good job!” reaction without criticism just erodes education. This way, the value of feedback is effectively totally lost. This is what I would call “splash the baby out with the bathwater”.
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Thank you for your alert!
The "angry" was another inaccurate translation from part of the Youthhood Fully section in the Book of Change. I think I understand the principle that you've mentioned in the above comments. However, it is very much beyond my capability to clearly describe the critical timing and preconditions mentioned above in English. Maybe I can get more insight about this after more practices. During the practices, I will keep an eye on this and of course avoid being "angry".
Today I reviewed Confucius' mottos about heuristic education. He remarked that the best moment to enlighten a student is when the student has thought hard enough about a problem but found no way out, when the student wants to say something (about the encountered problem or learned knowledge) but can not.
Hmm, the proof of "think/try hard enough" could be explained with another phrase "subjective initiative"--This phrase is believed to be created by our great teacher Mao, and almost every student in China learned about it. And an explanation of this phrase might be "to find, or create, new ways to solve problems but not to be restricted by the conditions".
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The story of "ridiculous case" continued.
Yesterday I sit among the manager teams and the general manager and heard their meeting.
From their spoken words, they somehow got quite frustrated about themselves. They did wish to make a change to the company, but found their capability was not enough. They reached a mutual understanding that they need a consulting company to help them to establish all sorts of business infrastructure (rules and routines in their company) better than an enterprise coach, after contacting the consulting company for quite a few times.
All managers realized that they were not doing good enough and each manager had a plan to improve their own department. Some plan was written down, but some plans were just in their heads.
The sales manager commented that they should maximize the output from the consulting company, since the fee was substantially high, compared to the profits their company earned this year. To maximize the output, they could altogether try their best to write down and improve their plans together, so they could see how they might do in the most hopeful manner, and what they really need from the consulting company.
The general manager knew very well that they did have their plans. However, he remarked that, since their limited knowledge, their best-effort-plans would probably be rewritten after the consulting company was in site; and that they were already so busy at this time, why waste their time? "This idea seemed a patient with little medical knowledge was spending a lot of time on learning medicine and trying to cure himself.", he said. The development manager agreed.
I talked to the general manager after the meeting. "I was very astonished to hear that you said your managers were patients." The job of patients are not to cure themselves, nor to stay in hospital. The patients have their own jobs. When they recover, they will pick up their jobs again and say good-bye to the doctor.
From my point of view, they appeared more like basketball players in NBA. Their jobs were winning basketball matches. Now they were not playing very well, and you consider hiring a coach or foreign aid into your team to help them perform better. Before, during and after that, they were all in the matches. The purpose of making a best-effort-plan could be seen as a good training of their teamwork. I've never heard a professional basketball player ever complained his training was a waste of time.
Their plans were so limited to their own departments. There was little sign of teamwork.
modified 20-Aug-23 9:08am.
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Your case develops into a detective story. 
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Days ago, I asked the managers in the "ridiculous" case story and let them choose the role of "Patient" or "Player".
The sales manager and other managers chose "Player".
The development manager, who echoed the general manager's "Patient" viewpoint last time, refused to choose between "Patient" and "Player", but insisted that he did not want any "Coach" who kept asking him questions and training him slowly, but was always a "Student" who had got absolutely stuck and badly needed a "Teacher" to help him out in a short time.
The general manager concluded that it was just a matter of different viewpoints--the "Doctor-patient" view was from the company problems solving angle, the "Coach-Team Player" view was from the organizational management angle, and even "Student-Teacher" view was also acceptable since it could also help solve the problems.
I disagreed with the development manager and the general manager--Great team members care for, challenge, remind and help each other and they actively position themselves in the match, let their best play the best, no one plays in a way that tries to win all scores in his team; whereas, either patients or students care about themselves only. After this meeting, it was unsurprised why developers knew little about how their products got sold and sales representatives knew little about development and the latter felt the development department was from "another company".
I also talked to the sales manager after the meeting privately, who expressed deep worry about the company. They once hoped that the development department could help make something that helped their sales. Unfortunately, the developers focused too much on "cool", "smart" and "intelligent" things, yet basic requirements from the customers--for instance, the stability of the system--were "ignored" or "not very well fulfilled". Whether those things could be sold well in the market was not the developers' first priority and the market forecast was not their strong suite.
I guessed, if they could team up together smoothly, would their performance be greatly improved?
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I would like to see how it looks in real life, not just the way you tell your story.
Don't you think looking at your role as you describe it is more important? “Player”, “Patient”, “Doctor”… but who are you? People faced problems and made a lot of mistakes, we understand it all. But what are you doing? You offer them a kindergarten game, this is what you do. Or do you want to play the role of a phycologist? Or maybe the doctor of a psychiatric clinic? What do you think those managers should think about you? I don't know, it depends on the settings, but chances are, I would tell you: “Please, get out, we would better do without your help. Or perhaps you want to drop all this and start talking business?” How can those people trust you? Did you think about it?
Also, you question if they “could team up together smoothly…?” I would say, the wrong question. Before posing it, you should get back to the root of the problem and ask: “Why should they team up?” At this moment, you base your reasoning on false assumptions. I would understand if you knew that each team does an adequate job, and the problem is somewhere in the middle. But how can you know that? I cannot see it from what you describe.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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