Morgan Housel has taught me a lot about writing and communication. He knows the value of a good story and manages to explain complicated subjects — especially involving money and psychology — in simple ways. Writing about ideas that “changed his life,” Housel points to “multi-disciplinary learning” and uses communication as an example:

Once you see the roots shared by most fields you realize there’s a sink of information you’ve been ignoring that can help you make better sense of your own profession. I didn’t appreciate how important communication is to providing investment advice before reading about how many doctors struggle to communicate effectively with patients, leading to patients who don’t stick with treatment plans and are resistant to lifestyle change.

Below you will find some other angles on the skill that’s as important for doctors as it is for finance professionals as it is for teachers as it is for parents (as it is for humans). Here’s the collected Refreshing Wednesday posts on Communication:

• Communication, luckily, is a practice.

• Once you learn about the transmission and ritual view of communication you’ll start to see it everywhere. H/T to Jay Rosen.

• Keri Potts, communicator extraordinaire, on immediacy and communication.

• Same topic (immediacy and communication), but this time the insight comes from . . . a CVS receipt?

• High-bandwidth communication is a personal and institutional choice. H/T to Naval Ravikant.

• Leadership and communication and design. H/T to Scott Belsky.

• The relationship between science and communication. H/T to Sarah Anderson.

• A simple formula for communication that is actually really hard. H/T to Monsignor Paul Tighe and Aric Jenkins.

• Everything I know about email communication. H/T to Reshan Richards and Eric Hudson. (And here’s a bonus tidbit from Tsedal Neeley who is soon-to-publish what looks like an important book on remote and hybrid work.)

• A few pros on crisis communication. H/T to Nancy Duarte,  Ewan McIntosh, and Dr. Nick Morgan.

This is a great read for science teachers, science students, researchers, and anyone interested in communication. It’s about the difference between being an authority in a field and being able to communicate, clearly and at the right level, outside of that field.

Here are some of the author’s beliefs:

Communicating science beyond the academic bubble is necessary to enhance public understanding of health and environmental issues and help individuals make well-informed personal decisions.

[Scientists] who engage in science communication must acknowledge that their area of expertise is deep but narrow, and recognize the limitations in their own knowledge. 

It is equally imperative to emphasize that being an expert on a topic doesn’t automatically make a scholar qualified to communicate it to a nonscientific audience. 

Science communication is a science in and of itself, one that requires rigorous training and instruction.

The mere title of “scientist” lends us a certain authority, and with that authority comes the responsibility to ensure that our communication with the public is accurate and clear.

H/T to Tomorrow’s Professor Postings.

A quick flip through the index of Blending Leadership shows that Reshan and I devoted a small percentage of our text to the topic of obsolescence (pages 147 – 148, 151, and 154-157 to be precise) .

Here’s a good summary of why we thought this topic needed to be on the mind’s of leaders:

[Let’s] turn our attention to to tech integration’s unruly cousin: obsolescence. Though it is true that there are always new tools emerging, it is also true that some of the tools upon which we come to depend — habitually — change continually or even disappear completely. Blended leaders must be prepared to grapple with the effects of obsolescence on communities of practice; they must be prepared to think about and manage through the demise of those online applications and services that have gained a user base with their schools [or businesses]. Sometimes you spend a lot of time getting people online, into a space, only to have to move all of them off. (147)

I bring up obsolescence today, was prompted to bring it up, in fact, because of a story I noticed recently. Here’s how it was reported in Slate:

Adobe Flash went dark on Dec. 31. The software had been flickering out since 2017, when Adobe announced it would discontinue Flash with three and a half years’ warning.

Reminder statements, press attention, and pop-ups warning about Flash’s discontinuation all followed. But despite the ample time to prepare, multiple government and corporate systems across the world were still caught by surprise when the Flash plugin finally died.

Source: These Places Were Not Ready for Flash to Die

The article goes on to discuss how planned and publicized obsolescence of Adobe Flash set off some rather nasty dominoes at places as established and varied as China Railway Shenyang, the South African Revenue Service, and The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Sometimes blending leadership “in the wild” is a positive or inspirational story, and sometimes it’s just a cautionary tale like the one(s) above.

Like most children, I’d imagine, my children ask me this from time to time: what do you do all day?

They know that I teach one English class and that I’m also a school administrator. They know that I squeeze in some writing when I can. But they have no idea what I’m doing when I’m in meetings, which take up a lot of my days and sometimes nights. On the surface, especially when we’re at home sharing work spaces, it looks like I spend a lot of time just talking with people.

That’s true . . . with a twist . . .

I spend a lot of time asking people questions so that they will talk to me, think out loud in front of me, uncover solutions or opportunities within earshot of me. I spend a lot of time, in other words, converting what is hidden or silent or garbled into something to which I can listen deeply. If I reach that point, my highest point of contribution is usually complete (the speaker figured it out) or just about to begin (I offer what I can offer).

Here are some questions I asked this week that led to particularly generative listening moments for me.

• Are you looking for input on your decision or input on the planning that will result from your decision?
• Where do you think an organization like ours should put its energy and resources over the next few years?
• What, specifically, are you practicing in order to get better in this area? How do you know it’s the right thing to practice? What does the practice actually look like?
• Are we talking about first order effects or second order effects?
• What would you write if you had to deliver this memo in the next thirty minutes?
• What would the meeting agenda be if you had to write it in the next fifteen minutes?
• What can we take out?
• If they could only use their attention on one part of that assignment, what part would matter most? Why not cut out all the rest?
• How was that argument constructed to be convincing to you? Now that you’ve thought about that, are you still convinced?
• If you could only keep three ideas from that presentation, what would they be?
• We know how it works now, but in what ways is it also beautiful?
• I just gave you some honest feedback . . . what words specifically express how you are feeling right now?
• Anyone else I should talk to about this?
• Are you looking for an opinion or just an ear?
• We’ve seen what stress looks like for you — you worked really hard at _____ — so what does rest look like?

The January 2021 issue of Klingbrief contains great sources, as usual, but the writing / thinking presented in the Briefs themselves is particularly inspired, provocative, and far-reaching.

Write for us here. Read with us here. And spread the word wherever the word is spreadable. Thank you!

Two ideas are rhyming in my head this morning. Both are about the difficulty of communicating, and both suggest that a humble, curious approach can help to fuel the necessary work.

The first one comes from a conversation between Reshan Richards, Monsignor Paul Tighe, and me:

While teaching I learned that I was responsible not only for transmission, but also for reception. It doesn’t matter how well you teach or what you’re saying; the real vindication and judgment to be made about the quality of your teaching is when you interact with your students and listen to understand, or correct examinations in order to understand what they’ve understood. Specifically in secondary school, I learned that you’re responsible not just for what you’re saying, but for what the other person is understanding.

A lot of that is about understanding the other person’s culture, their vocabulary, realizing what’s working or not working in the way you’re teaching. For all my subsequent work, I feel that good communication comes from being an insecure teacher. Even if I’m preaching, to this day, I don’t use a text. I watch people’s faces. I can see if they’re lost or if they’re following me, and I think it’s my responsibility to complete the communication cycle at some level.

The second one comes from Aric Jenkins‘ farewell note at the bottom of the January 30, 2021 Race Ahead newsletter. (The Ellen that he mentions is Ellen McGirt.)

Communication is so important in a hyper-online world. Things so easily get taken out of context. Seemingly good intentions get warped into performative reactions. You may recall my piece on Juneteenth over the summer, and how that worked out for some companies putting out vague statements (read: not great). It’s not enough to just write. You have to communicate. With your peers, your colleagues, your employees. And sometimes that means taking a step back, listening and learning, before you proceed.

For some writers, this might just sound like permission to procrastinate. But for most among us, I’d consider it an exercise in curiosity. In line with what Ellen has recently been writing about in regards to “candid conversations,” think deeply about what you want to communicate, and how might to be the best way to do it.

When you actually, genuinely, think about what you want to say, you have something to say—and that’s the difference between great writing and all the rest. Coherent typing is not enough to write well. Communicating an idea, a story, can be. It’s okay if you don’t know exactly what you want to say at the beginning. Embrace your ignorance. And then do the work.

A simple formula for communicating that is actually really hard? Be an insecure teacher and then do the work.

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