“The more we automate information handling, the more we will have to create opportunities for effective communication.”
- Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005), Austrian – American management guru, as quoted decades ago (Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, 2002)
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
- George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950), Irish playwright, critic and activist and Nobel Prize winner (1925)
Clarity. Conciseness. Disambiguous.
And confirmation.
It might have been Zig Ziglar who said, “I’m going to tell you what I’m going to tell you, and then I’m going to tell you, and then I’m going to tell you what I told you.”
Not a perfect formula, but worth considering.
And to Drucker’s point, the more we ask machines to do for us, the better we ought to communicate with the humans with whom we’re engaged. Clearly. Concisely. Precisely (that’s the opposite of ambiguous, in case your keeping score at home.) And then confirming that we understood and were understood.
In case the technology got something wrong, and so that we don’t.
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