Communication

(Comment: As originally posted on the OUBS Blog)

The word communication has been derived from the latin word communare, meaning “to impart” or “to share”. It is used a lot broader though as computers seem to communicate via phone lines in our language. Telephones however don’t. In a company’s shareholder meeting it might be unclear who is communicating, the company or the executives and the communication might also be one way. If you don’t respond to someone, are you only not talking or also communicating on a non-voice level? All this is not simple. The exploration follows.

Many would argue that machines fail to communicate because they lack intention and understanding. But this is now wrong in that with the advent of web services there is a way for machines to communicate. The semantic web is another idea that will further the possibility for computers to understand.

Key issues with communication are: symbols, messages, interpretation, understanding, meaning, interaction, intention and persuasion. If you put all of this together you end up in stories.

Theories of Communication

The SMCR Model of communication is one way of seeing it:

Sender -> Message via Channel -> Receiver

More complex systems also include a coder and decoder. Noise and interference are also often noted. To overcome communications problems in this model, you can use redundancy in the message or feedback. This is the difference between UDP and TCP as an internet communications protocol for example. In TCP the other side says that it has received a message creating some overhead. In UDP you do not need this having less overhead but at the same time needing some overlap to be able to piece together the data even if some parts are lost. Another thing is that English text and normally be reduced by 30% and still be understandable. Mac OS X, the operating system by Apple, has a system wide summary function for example which often yields some very nice results.

There are strengths and weaknesses in the information theory model. It is very well understood and can very easily be applied and used. But, it does not address meaning, understanding or interpretation. AT the same time it sees the message as the communication, not the way to get a certain behavior from the receiver. Communication problems in our real world kind of prove that its just not that simple.

An alternative is the constructivist model. It sees people as constructing mental images and models used to make sense of the world. IT places weight on the difference of individuals. For newborns for example the world is a “buzzing booming confusion” as psychologist William James (1890) said, before it learns and makes sense of the world at least. You construct your understanding and are only conscious of those things that you need to be aware of at any time.

For example, when you started out driving, you might have had problems to listen to the radio at the same time. This becomes easier as you need to put less direct attention to driving. You might even have noticed that you suddenly become aware that you do not remember the last few seconds driving. Your subconscious took over there and would have put your conscious in the drivers seat again if something happened.

The person we wish to communicate with is different from us by culture, age, gender, experience, … hence the message we send might be interpreted differently. The constructivist will acknowledge the likelihood of different interpretations and to find shared meaning.

Bennet made a six step model for empathy in this model:

\- assuming difference

\- knowing self

\- suspending self

\- allowing guided imagination

\- allowing empathetic experience

\- re-establishing self

This leads us to semiotics, the idea that we communicate through signs (words, images, acts, objects, …). These signs might be arbitrary but only as long as they don’t become a community standard. All signs have certain codes behind them Chandler argues that. Learning these codes involves adopting the values, assumptions, and world-views which are built into them without (our) normally being aware of their intervention in constructing of reality.

This is used all around us, like in ads, where a signifier is used to convey a certain image idea or codes. The process is as follows:

Signifier -> Signify -> (social) beliefs and attitudes -> larger assumptions

This also leads to the concept of branding in that you create an identity for a product and that people are made to buy into a lifestyle.

Communication and Culture

The concept of culture was first used in writing by Edward & Taylor in 1871. It is again hard to define. I personally liked the simple on the one from Stradley (1980): The acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and generate social behavior.

Of course there is a bit of ambiguity in there, as to how knowledge was acquired or codified. But it seems that knowledge happens in context, in a culture. There is also no real world or real knowledge if you look at it like this. You need to ask yourself how much culture fit is needed in knowledge and how constructivistic do you need to get.

Going from here we need to look at language and ethnography. Ethnography was developed as a sub-branch of anthropology concerned with the different ethnic cultures. A central focus has always been on language. e.g. a culture in Afrika has no language concept for numbers. They have the values “some” and “many”. Just think of the limits this puts on knowledge or the opportunities it creates.

(Update : Steve pointed out that they do theoretically have a concept for numbers. None, some, many. It’s just a different one from mine. Okok ;))

Hofstede did one of the best known studies on different ethnic cultures within IBM which you can read about here.

A nice example cited in the book is this. Americans say: Don’t just sit there — do something. Japanese might say: Don’t just do something — sit there.

Culture as a knowledge system

White put it like this in 1959: (Culture does not exist of) extra-somatic things and events… (but) consists of things and events considered within an extra-somatic context. [Extra-somatic meaning outside or beyond a person.]

This means that you can study culture based on the things around it. Culture is our frame of reference. This leads to the idea of distributed cognition and potentially even collective knowledge. Then start thinking about individual knowledge and corporation knowledge and hear your brain boiling over ;)

Organizational Culture

It is argued that this should fit the environment and hence there potentially isn’t a best culture out there for a company. The culture might even have to change over time, especially with faced with technological discontinuities. Deal and Kennedy categorized companies’ culture into, yes, you guessed it, a quadrant.

Feedback quick and risk high: Tough guy, macho

Feedback quick and risk low: Work hard, play hard

Feedback slow and risk high: bet-your-company culture

Feedback slow and risk low: process culture

The internet now really enabled the work hard play hard culture because we can have amazingly quick feedback in low risk environment.

Communication, culture and managing knowledge

Personal knowledge is deeply linked to our mindsets. A Vietnamese will be unaware that a “brother” can be referred to without giving an age. These tacit models are important to keep in mind. Knowledge is contextual and the empathy model suggests that this context is very important.

Communication via stories has a long history here because it is one of the most important ways to transfer knowledge. Snowden argues that they work so well because they are simple, non-threatening, memorable and can bring across complicated ideas.

_Welcome blogging, sorry drifting off._

Communication and Learning

This section is intended to provide a framework and can be summarized roughly as … (ok not so easy to do rough but anyway)

Learning is key to knowledge and thinking. It has a function of diminishing returns as more learning will become harder along the way (learning curve). Learning is also culturally influenced as well as by our mental models in general. The question arises whether all thinking requires speech and hence language has a high influence. Speed reading might be a good way to think about this.

This also means that the human brain does not work in a vacuum. Different people learn better at different stages of Kolb’s learning cycle. There is a theorist, pragmatist, activist and reflector. Learning seems to be messier and more context sensitive though. You need critical attention for learning and double loop learning to go to the next level. At the same time the brain seems to have an easier time recalling things if you are in a similar situation or state of mind than when you remembered them. Still, the situation where you need to apply what you learned will need to different in context from that where you learn.

Communications and media systems is the last part in this. Stories here have been even more important and media evolved from speech to writing and then to cheaper writing, images, movies, … . There is also the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication types here, where the Delphi method of creativity is quoted.