Communicate More

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” - George Bernard Shaw

We know what we already know. This tautology is one of the major roadblocks to communication. We mistakenly think that since we understand something, everyone else must too. The fallacy bleeds into how we communicate. We think that once we’ve verbalized an idea that it was grasped, when in fact, all we did was say something aloud.

Communication implies the message was received and internalized - we forget that learning takes time. Even if the listener followed along, your job isn’t done - that was just one person, and one moment in time. Communication is not a set it and forget it thing. True understanding comes over time, through repeated reinforcement.

“The typical human brain can hold about seven pieces of new information for less than 30 seconds. If something does not happen in that short stretch of time, the information becomes lost. If you want to extend the 30 seconds to, say, a few minutes, or even an hour or two, you need to consistently re-expose yourself to the information.”  - John Medina

Keeping the product machinery in motion can be all-consuming, but as important as our direct work is bringing the broader organization along. Sharing information on feature development, key decisions, and strategic vision is critical, and an often-ignored part of the product team’s job. Building and delivering a product requires coordination beyond the scrum team.

Guard against becoming so engrossed in the details of your daily work that you forget there are teams of people as essential to the process as your daily stand up. If you’ve ever heard from your support team that product management ‘is a black hole’, you’ve been failing on this front.

You might think your vision is clear since you presented at the all-hands - it’s not. You might think engineering knows the target market since you emailed them a PDF - they don’t. You might think that asking support to email their ‘top issues’ to you made them feel a part of the process - it didn’t.

Every team inside your company needs something from the product team, and as importantly, they have something to contribute back. Support needs to know how a new feature works, and marketing needs to know how it stacks up to the competition. This information isn’t a ‘nice to have’ - it’s integral to their effectiveness.

But sharing isn’t enough. If we think of information as a one-way street, we’re missing the point. Our goal is dialogue, not broadcast. Insight needs to flow the other way as well. Product teams need a clear signal back from the organization to react appropriately to the environment they are too often insulated from. Is a feature too hard to use? Are customers leaving us for a certain competitor? Customer and market information bombard the entire company, let them be your eyes and ears. Embrace their perspective.

Information is the lifeblood of your organization and the product team has a privileged position in the chain of custody. As always, privilege comes with responsibility.

It’s a harsh reality, but communicating and listening, again and again, even when you feel you already have, is a part of the job, and it’s never done. Nurturing this conversation across the organization is every bit as important as the feature you’re building - perhaps more so. 

Communicate more.