The communication tax

I have a user guide. I think everyone should write one. How do you work? How do you want people to communicate with you? What should someone know before working with you?

Communication has a tax. I have something in my mind, I encode it into words, and I pass those words to you. You decode them through your own model of the world and the context you have. Your understanding can be very different from what I meant.

Then we both carry on thinking the conversation was clear. Later, we find out that we were carrying two different pictures.

I find it useful to make the defaults visible. How should people bring me a problem? What can they decide themselves? How do we give each other feedback? When should something be raised immediately?

The guide starts a conversation. We still have to check what the other person understood. Ask them to explain the next action in their own words. Agree who is doing what and when.

I encourage you to write your own. There is a blank template here, with a fictional example to show how it can work.