
The biggest professional challenge of my career: communication - ttunguz
http://tomtunguz.com/the-biggest-professional-challenge-of-my-career-communication
======
bane
If you think of communication as a tool, something to keep in mind is that
sometimes we use communication in lieu of having a better tool. Once you've
made your persuasive argument and have to get to work...

An example, when Wave was still an going concern at google, I ran a team doing
Enterprise Architecture designs. As an experiment on one project, we decided
to use a very structured Wave/Google Docs approach (I don't remember all of
the details). But it cut the communication requirements down to a small
percentage of what we typically had been up to. A hundred emails a day might
turn into 5-10. Project assets were magically organized and Wave became a
simple place to capture the work, ask a couple questions, see where each
member was with their portion of the work, offer help etc.

I'm finding similar things with Trello (I'm pretty new to using it) when used
for things-other-than-agile-development-management. Emails/IMs/PhoneCalls are
way down, assets are already organized, everybody knows where everybody else
is at a glance (eliminating the need for most syncing
communications/meetings).

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prawks
_When pitching a new product, I detailed the observations, product hypotheses,
experimental design, results and conclusion in that order. The discussion
focused mainly on the experimental design and the biases in the results and
the implications for the conclusion._

I've had trouble putting into words how different mis-communications of mine
have occurred, and this sums it up rather nicely. I think many developers I
know do this: we're so excited about all of the sound reasoning we placed
around our conclusions and the processes that got us there that the actual
conclusion is an afterthought tacked onto the end (oddly enough, the
conclusion of the communication).

But that's not why you're telling someone something. You're telling them so
that they take away _what_ you put all of that work into arriving at, not how
you did it (unless they want details later, of course).

~~~
ZoFreX
Some similar advice I heard recently (I think possibly in another HN
discussion thread) was to not be scared of "spoilers" when communicating. I
have a tendency to try to make my presentations a nice linear development,
like a story, which naturally dissuades you from revealing the "ending" before
you reach it. However, it's a lot easier to keep people's attention if they
know where your story is heading, it gives them the answer to the ever-present
implicit question: why do I care?

~~~
ChuckMcM
This is the part the I had to break myself. I have always enjoyed telling
stories, and they work great in a causal setting but they are not useful
(except as illustration) in some contexts.

I did a power point once which was essentially the inverted pyramid in a deck,
the first slide was the conclusion, the next two where the problem statement
and the conclusion, the next 5 were the problem statement, some constraints on
the shape of the solution and the conclusion. Down to about a 22 point
presentation on the problem, the constraints, the different paths tried, the
lessons learned and fed back into the process, and then the solution.

It was a bit gimmicky but some folks really liked it as they felt they always
knew what I was getting at.

------
swalsh
The book looks really interesting, but at $63 it is out of impulse purchase
range. Has anyone else read it? Would you too recommend it?

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richeyrw
The "Minto Pyramid Principle" looks interesting, unfortunately it appears to
be out of print ($60+ on Amazon) do you have any recommendations for similar,
perhaps cheaper books?

~~~
wisty
You want an answer, but people don't necessarily want to give you one. So how
do you make them want to answer you?

The answer is: sitcom + question = Answer.

Situation (We need to)

Complication (But ...)

Question (So how / what / when / where / can / could ...)

Answer (This is what you want from them).

I think there's a lot of other good communication advice in it, but most looks
pretty generic (cut out the crap, use appropriate language, have some
structure, etc). You've read Strunk and White right?

(Note, I've just scanned a summary, so that might not be all there is to it).

~~~
ttunguz
There's a bit more to it. Use of inductive and deductive reasoning. And the
process for creation an argument, which I found pretty helpful.

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elmuchoprez
The inverted pyramid method seeks max efficiency under the condition of not
knowing how long your audience is going to stick around. That's why it's so
prominent in journalism - you never know when the reader might just move on,
so get the important parts out first. Outside of that condition, its
efficiency breaks down and you'd be better off structuring a presentation
within the allotted time.

And if that's the kind of relationship you have with your coworkers, someone's
probably being overpaid.

~~~
car54whereareu
His coworkers are overpaid?

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ghc
I'm going to give this inverted pyramid a try. I'm always wondering why I just
can't effectively get my ideas across to certain people.

~~~
ttunguz
Let me know what you think.

------
benhedrington
For what it is worth looks like they just released an iOS app as a companion
for the book. $15 is the price. It appears to capture the methods of the book
plus contains videos teaching the method. No reviews yet.

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cllns
I'm not sure if Svbtle has a policy for this, but I'd appreciate an
"(affiliate link)" disclaimer after a link to a $63 book.

