Understanding the power of communication matters

It is Babel out there

It would usually happen, technologies that overlap, strong expertise in the separate technologies that seep into egotistical posturing, then exacerbated by a very political setting that engenders silos of indifference whilst all working for the same organisation.

What you get is a tinderbox of conflict and reverberation played out in emails with escalating intransigence as more and more people who already have enough trouble to deal with are drawn into it with the hope that one would prevail and other is vanquished.

Yet, I do not indulge in these power plays and that is what it sometimes demonstrates to gain any particular benefit than to see that what in my reasonable professional opinion gets done. This is where communication, clarity, persuasion, courtesy, and evidence matter. I will not propose without the supporting documentation and references to buttress the point.

The compelling urge to respond

Then, I rely on the reasonableness of my argument to eventually persuade those who can engage to facilitate the necessary. After a number of exchanges, a response came back that left me quite exasperated. Having conceded that the viewpoint was acceptable the rest bordered on infantile invective.

I could have immediately replied, but I could see no further need to conduct that conversation, I left it to my managers to take to the next level and that is what I asked them to do. Generally, I am no fan of needless meetings that yield no progress. I would rather just give my managers the information they need to thrash out the essential compromises and we can get on with what we need to do.

Just let it work

As the email cooled off for a few days and over the weekend, I had begun to craft an adequate response in my head that I began to write on Tuesday, I was not convinced of the need to send it, so, it lay in my Drafts folder.

A meeting scheduled for yesterday was postponed to today and it was my intention to maintain silence until when prompted. I could not have anticipated the developments when concessions were fully made with even more support than we anticipated. All this arrived at on the review of their systems and realising that our request was as reasonable as it could ever be.

At their behest we now have ample opportunity that probably would never have been possible without instigation, that first went completely contrary and sour to cooperation and acquiescence. That’s why I do what I do, I am a geek of sorts but it takes a different kind of political communication strategy to get radical change to a point where it gets the full support of competing interests and eventual implementation.