Communication is the common
medium through which all collaboration moves. We think we know how to
communicate, but maybe we don’t, and maybe thinking we do is our
greatest hindrance to success.
Anthony Cimino posted a brilliant observation recently at CIO.com, showing how we can learn to communicate by looking inside any busy restaurant kitchen.
“The executive chef barks out the orders. The cooks
repeat back the orders to show that they heard correctly and understand
their current task. Watching the communication among the cooks was the
real eureka moment for me. If they don’t speak, they fail or, worse,
someone gets hurt. From telling another cook that they need two more
minutes before they are ready to plate a dish, to letting them know
that they are approaching them with a pan full of hot oil, each cooks
livelihood and life, depends on the regular and open communication from
everyone on the team. In this environment there is no such thing as
keeping secrets or talking too much.” – Learn management from cooking shows
He goes on to compare this process with
software development, saying that teams need to learn from the kitchen
example. Anyone who reads Dovetail Software’s
own “Doc” List describing events from our agile development process
will already have the flavor of how this communication can work.
“My understanding – and belief – is that all members
of the team will benefit from more frequent changes of pairs. Knowledge
and skill will thereby get passed around, and the resulting increase in
quality and productivity will benefit all. I don’t see that happening
yet. So I asked for a discussion.” – Exploring ‘Done’ and Pairing
One point Anthony Cimino doesn’t make in his
observation about the kitchen is that no one explains to any newcomer
what the protocol of communication is. The newbie is thrown into the
fray, and intrinsic human skill takes over: people communicate what
must be said, and they learn on their feet what that is and what that
is not.
This is the key point, not that people communicate
but that there is also a learning process in each environment or
situation for the optimal way in which to communicate. What’s allowed
in war and Hell’s Kitchen may not work in the lab or the classroom, but
each scene has its best way to talk.
This understanding is
perhaps one of the foundational things missing from contemplation of
IT’s alignment with business goals of growth. We ourselves have argued
here for a common development language between IT and the business side
of the enterprise: maybe this misses the point that neither side even
knows how to talk, let alone talk turkey.
Perhaps if we
apply collaboration to the very process of planning and then executing
projects, we can develop better ways to talk. We already know that
collaboration hastens success:
“Social networking has displayed incontrovertibly one
truth already known but often ignored about the knowledge economy:
collaboration yields greater wealth than isolation.” – Integrating Data and People
To our credit, we have said all along that
Web 2.0 collaboration and networking technologies and protocols are the
way to aerate the enterprise culture, adding permeability. When we
don’t know how to move forward, the first step is to talk this very
fact onto the table. Then we stand a chance.
