The Way We Communicate, Part II

This article is part of a book I am currently writing. You can read it for free as it evolves at?FixingWorkplaceCommunication.com

In the previous issue, we explored the first type of communication: Real-Time Communication. In this issue, we will define Near-Time Communication, which is practically where things started to get really counter-effective.

Near-Time Communication?

Imagine a world where you can have a conversation with someone even if they are unavailable just now. Imagine a world where you could do that with dozens of people in parallel. Instead of finding a time when everyone is available to have a meeting, you can just write whatever you had in mind, send it, and get a response once people are able to read it. Imagine a world where such conversations are not only free from the boundaries of time, but are also not restricted to any physical location. You can interact with your colleagues located literally on the other side of the world. Imagine a world where meetings are not the first option for interacting. You can share your ideas, ask questions, and have a conversation without the need to get everyone’s attention at the same time. As a participant in such a discussion, you can take your time and respond when the time is right for you. Imagine an utterly asynchronous world.?

The adoption of email as a first-class tool should have solved the scalability problem of Real-Time Communication. Email was never meant to be an immediate form of communication. It should have allowed us to take the time and respond on our terms. It promised more effective communication, even if only because it made communication so easy. You no longer had to schedule meetings, free the time to attend them, and drop everything else. Email enabled us to communicate whenever, wherever, and with whomever we wanted. And then, it got out of control.?

In his book?A World Without Email, Cal Newport describes how email became the most dominant form of workplace communication and its devastating side effects. The more widespread email became, the less productive we became. Instead of communicating when it suits us, we are engaged in a constant conversation, leaving practically no time for meaningful, deep work — the work we are supposed to deliver. Email has enabled us to communicate more, but not in a good sense. We are just lighter on the trigger because email is so easy to send. When our communication is mainly based on email, we are less happy and more stressed, and in a perfect correlation, we (and the organizations we work for) achieve less. What should have been the holy grail of communication became a double-edged sword with dramatic negative results.?

But even if we put all these adverse outcomes aside (and we shouldn’t really), email is a poor way of communicating. Even if your sole intention is to share an idea, get information, solve a problem together, or get some collective insight, email is one of the least effective ways to do that. It is just not designed to enable a real, meaningful conversation.

Not long after email became a standard way of communicating, it became a textual replacement for real-time conversations. It is delayed, but assumes (or demands) a high level of responsiveness. It is textual, but unlike other textual content, it is threaded and often includes nested chains of statements and counter-statements (or questions and replies). At the same time, it is flat in the sense that everything appears to be urgent or at least have the same priority. It is not organized as any other text you would read and process. Email should have allowed us a high level of asynchrony, but instead, we are treating it almost always as a synchronous way of communicating, even though it is not designed as such.?

And then came instant messaging, and made everything even worse. If email was a poor simulation of Real-Time Communication, instant messaging was email on steroids. Dialogues and conversations became more intensive. The overhead of sharing anything with any number of people became even smaller. Messages became shorter, and the information they embedded became more volatile. We were expected to be even more responsive to instant messaging than we were to emails (they are, after all, instant). And as teams became even more distributed, many assumed that instant messaging should replace not just meetings and emails but now even informal, real-time interactions.?

Cal Newport refers to email and instant messaging as “Asynchronous Communication,” but this is somewhat misleading. Technically, both these platforms could have been used asynchronously. Occasionally, they are. But for the most part, we use emails and instant messaging as a replacement for real-time conversation, without considering that they are a poor substitute for actual face-to-face interaction. I prefer to call this type of communication Near-Time Communication.

Near-Time Communication is any method that tries to simulate Real-Time Communication, but without being immediate and direct. Sadly, with the attempt to simulate real-time interaction using non-real-time platforms, communication got severely broken.

In the next issue, we will learn just how Near-Time Communication messes up the way we communicate (and operate) in the workplace.

Explore more at?FixingWorkplaceCommunication.com