This morning I picked up a piece of mail that arrived in my mailbox yesterday. It looked like (plain envelope with a simple return address) and felt like a piece of junk mail. You know the type where amazing offers are delivered like a new credit card or high speed internet service. As I was cleaning off the table I picked it up and at the last second decided to open it. Okay, there wasn’t much news worth reading in the Sunday paper this morning. As I opened it, I was surprised to see a pair of baseball tickets for a St Louis Cardinals game my son and I have scheduled to see at the end of August. I know I was warned in the ordering process that the tickets would be mailed in a plain envelope, yet that isn’t the point. The point is, over time were conditioned to pick out stuff that is unimportant and discard it accordingly. And my baseball tickets were halfway to the garbage can before I realized their importance.
Why is this story relevant?
In my book Without Warning, I present that communication is one area where silent problems commonly reside. And one of the reasons communication is such a challenge is because each of our employees are conditioned to discard the junk mail (i.e. messages) coming their way. Today, we have more communication tools at our disposal, yet communication effectiveness continues to decline. Part of the reason being, we have too much noise in our lives and in our workplace. And the way we overcome this is to filter out the junk mail, which from time to time means we discard important stuff without opening it.
Bottom Line: Beware, just because we sent it, spoke it or communicated it, doesn’t mean it was heard. Find methods to bring your communication effectiveness up a notch. And remember, repetition is still an important tool in the communication toolbox.
Tags: Communication
