effective-conversation
7 conversations about this topic.
The Muscle Memory of Conversations
This week I’ve returned to playing Elden Ring. Movement, combat and management of weapons, armour and spells, is all handled by a “controller”1. Games will generally ease you into which button to press when but after a while you end up not having to think about what to do and you just do it. The thing is, every game is different.
Don't Just Communicate, Converse
When employees in the workplace complain about a lack of communication, what they really mean is a lack of conversation with a capital C. Conversation is Collaborative; requiring people to come together with an openness to joint mutual benefit. Controlled; focussed to achieve outcomes in the world. Continuous; we are almost always in some form of conversation, be that internal or external.
The Perfect Mail Merge
We have a state election on Saturday. One local candidate sent a letter to our household today. We have four that will be voting. They could have sent a letter each. They could have sent it to “Dear voter” Instead, they sent one letter to all four of us, by name and the address had “The Buchan Family”. That is the best mail merge I have ever seen.
RSS Remains an Important Technology
I’ve written several times over the past 20 years that RSS feeds are important yet can be a hinderance as much as a help. RSS Gathers News and Audio to Me I use them extensively in my news reader (currently News Explorer) to go out to websites that offer a RSS feed and pull the news to me. I don’t have the time to visit every site and see if there is something new to read.
Can't, Won't and Shouldn't
The other day a friend was saying to me that he’d been involved in an investigation at work, and colleagues were asking him for details (gossip). He said he’d been telling them, “I can’t say anything.” Got me to thinking of the difference between “can’t” and “won’t”. Can’t is more, “I’d like to, but I don’t have a choice in keeping quiet.” It’s a way of keeping social care of those who have asked, even if they should know better.
Digital Overwhelm
Euan Semple posted about the digital overwhelm we are facing more and more as online systems become ever more dictated yet poor interface design makes them unusable. If you’re waving at someone to get their attention for assistance, and they continually ignore you, you will submit and put up with the pain.
Ideas are Better in Bed
Conversations such as blog posts that I write in my head lying in bed or when walking are always better than they end up when I type them. I wonder if it’s because typing is simply physical and there is less emotion accessible in the moment.