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Communicate Thoughts and Meanings Not Facts and Data
Project Management, Project Communications, Project ReportingSource - Article by Bob Andrew
Steven Rose, in The Making of Memory, describes how many ancient philosophers were dubious about having a written culture. They claimed that writing was inhuman-it depersonalised thoughts and weakened the mind.
Socrates even argued that writing destroys memory and those who write will become forgetful since they have to rely on external sources for what they lack in internal resources
Do these beliefs of the ancient philosophers strike a chord with many of us involved in project management, where everything has to be written down in endless memos, reports, notes, etc., and where the spoken word seems to have become secondary to the written one? Are we not becoming depersonalised as a result of having to write everything down.
Without delving too deeply into the psychology of thought or the physiology of the brain, let us for a moment dwell on whether writing something down improves memory. Most memory-enhancing courses recommend that pictures or symbols are better than words when preparing for a talk or presentation. Words on their own seem difficult to remember whereas graphics are more easily absorbed by the brain. Why is this? Is it perhaps because the brain works more with thoughts and meanings and is unlike a computer which works with data? Pictures and symbols carry with them personally interpreted thoughts, whereas words, or sentences, are more rigid in their interpretation. Words and data are facts with rigid meanings and are difficult to translate into thoughts. As a result the brain has difficulty in remembering them. As Mark Twain said: “A man’s private thoughts can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always.” We are more easily able to forget facts than our thoughts.
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What we are writing to each other all day are mostly facts and data, which may be very important but which are difficult to remember. Perhaps we should rather communicate thoughts and meanings. Ricardo Semler at Semco (Maverick) has obtained amazing results by asking all staff to write only ‘headline’ memos. The full meaning, not the facts and data, is thus communicated. An engineer in his organisation who invents and develops a new machine does not have to write an endless report to communicate and justify his idea: he simply sends the boss a memo stating’ “New Cost Effective Gismo Invented-It Works!”. Those who want to see how it was developed can ask him. There is also little doubt that we should use the spoken word more. As Socrates implied: when we speak to each other we communicate our thoughts and our meanings of things. In this way we enrich not only our own minds but also those that listen to us. Quoting Mark Twain again: “Life does not consist of facts and happenings. It consists of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing though one’s heads.”
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Bob Andrew
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Bob Andrew