Problems that are part of a legitimate crisis or problems that have a valid, time-sensitive component4YOU ARE MESSING AROUND WITH FAR TOO MANY ISSUES ALREADY
Growing up in Texas in the 1970s, I didn’t know what inflation was, but I gathered from the adult conversations all around me that it wasn’t good.
Decades later, fears of a ’70s-style repeat (or worse) keep economic inflation in the news. But while we collectively worry about how much we may have to pay for a gallon of milk, we’re largely overlooking a different threat: communication inflation.
Just as an inflated dollar loses its buying power, our dramatically increased rates of communication have cheapened our messages. We suffer from chronic transmission overload, pervasive distraction, and cascading communication problems as too many people weigh in on too many issues. As a result, it often takes more time and more energy to transmit even relatively straightforward messages. We need to regain the purchasing power of our words.
Five human tendencies make us susceptible to communication inflation:
1. We love to talk. The primordial human desire to connect fuels a great deal of our communication. Almost 2.5 billion people have social networking accounts, over 2.6 billion have instant message accounts, over 5 billion people—out of 7 billion globally—have cell phones, and an estimated 10 trillion e-mails are sent annually (and that doesn’t include spam).1 Humans love to communicate, and now we have convenient, powerful, and affordable ways to do so.
2. We are action oriented. Humans are doers. This is why it feels so good to hammer out an e-mail, fire off a text message, or reflexively respond to an instant message. Quick, cheap, and easy communication is an indulgence that makes us feel like we are accomplishing something. Unfortunately, those bursts of gratification fan the inflationary flames. The resulting glut of messages makes it difficult to isolate and act on conversations that can’t wait. We scurry from nonissues to faux crises to contrived dilemmas, while more difficult situations stack up and become major problems.
3. We instinctively pay attention to social messages. People have been keeping an eye on the Joneses since those neighbors brought home their first pelt. We pay keen attention to social cues, scanning our environment for information that helps us understand what’s going on and where we fit into the social structure. We collect and try to process an overwhelming amount of information. We don’t want to miss anything that’s happening in our immediate environment, even if much of it is of marginal value.
4. We like solving problems. We are the species that invented duct tape, superglue, and sticky notes. We like fixing things. Long before we used our opposable thumbs to punch out smartphone messages, we were using them to pick up sticks and rocks to fashion tools and solve problems. This propensity remains with us today and explains why we often jump into issues that only tangentially relate to us. Put a problem in our inbox and we will instinctively try to solve it.
5. We underestimate communication’s ability to create problems. We are also an optimistic, never-quit, sun-will-come-out-tomorrow, next-time-will-be-better people. And while our optimism has many upsides, it does create a quirk: we discount the number of problems that bad communication causes in our lives, while simultaneously exaggerating communication’s problem-solving capabilities. The reality is that not all problems have a communication solution, and bad communication can cause more trouble than we can readily fix, even with an endless supply of duct tape and superglue.
Our smartphones and computers make it easier than ever to indulge our desires to jump into conversations. Take an action-oriented, problem-solving, social people who inherently love to talk and give them powerful communication devices, and the result is, in hindsight, entirely predictable: hypercommunication. With all of us empowered to chip in our two cents, it’s no wonder that the result is inflationary. Our quick, cheap, and easy digital devices allow us to have far too many unnecessary conversations, engage in way too much unnecessary collaboration, and get our hands (and thumbs) on too many irrelevant issues.
The solution to communication inflation is simple: engage in fewer conversations. Avoid some conversations entirely and delay countless others. All we need is a method to separate conversations we should have immediately from all the others so we can stop trying to solve every issue that comes our way.
For a model, let’s turn back the clock.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s surgeon-in-chief, Dominique Jean Larrey, was a pioneer in emergency medical care and was one of the first battlefield surgeons in history. Among Larrey’s many innovations were the so-called flying ambulances—horse-drawn carriages that could rapidly extract the wounded from the battlefield. Larrey also developed and advocated techniques for effective amputations, trading damaged limbs for the lives of innumerable Napoleonic soldiers.
But Larrey’s primary contribution was something that is now common in medicine, but it was transformative at the time. Larrey is the father of triage—the allocation of emergency care, especially during times of calamity, to maximize overall survivability.2 Prior to Larrey’s system, there was no consistent way to evaluate and then treat patients most in need of care following a sudden influx of wounded. Wounded, but treatable, soldiers died waiting for care while medical staff worked with less critical—or sometimes less treatable—cases. Larrey developed a system elegant in its simplicity and powerful in its utility: evaluate each case as it arrives in order to allocate scarce resources for maximum effect.
Triage classification systems have evolved since Napoleon’s era, but they are still, at the core, descendants of Larrey’s simple and functional scheme.3 When triage is used properly, doctors and patients benefit as time, energy, and resources help the greatest number of people.
Today we struggle with the lack of the same resources—time and energy—that Larrey did two centuries ago. Smart communicators, like smart doctors, have a good triage system to focus on the most pressing issues, while delaying or ignoring less important matters. Effective conversational triage has never been more necessary, as the communication revolution’s explosion of data, information, and connections brings us more issues to sort through than ever before. We can’t afford to let the walking wounded push ahead of the gravely injured, and we don’t have the resources to send hangnails in for surgery.
Applying the following three categories of conversational triage—Now, Delay, and Avoid—will help you free up that precious time and energy you need.
Problems in the Now category require an immediate, solution-based conversation. Don’t automatically assign too many issues to the Now category—this is the fundamental miscalculation that your triage system is trying to correct—or the resulting inflation will soak up your resources. If you’re not sure if something is a Now issue, try delaying it and see what happens.
Examples of Now category problems can include:
Problems that are part of a legitimate crisis or problems that have a valid, time-sensitive component4
Problems you have reason to believe will get worse if not dealt with immediately
Almost all problems brought to you by your boss, crucial employees, key stakeholders, or vital colleagues5
Problems brought to you by people who seldom bring you problems
Problems connected to the small number of areas you have identified as crucial to your professional success
A problem you recently put in the Delay category that has returned
Any one of the parameters on the list is sufficient to require immediate handling; a problem that touches multiple parameters should galvanize your attention.
Delay is your default category. Many issues don’t need your active intervention, and you will probably be pleasantly surprised to find that delaying conversations, can, over time, encourage some problems to disappear completely or to resolve themselves without your participation.
Examples of Delay category problems include:
Problems that you think will either go away or resolve themselves without your intervention (many issues that come to your attention probably go here)
Problems that have resulted from conversational escalation and are now disconnected from root issues
Problems that someone else (like peers or direct reports at work or family members at home) can and should solve without you
Problems with no crucial time component, where a delay may result in better information, or problems that may become more clearly defined in the future
For all but obvious Now issues, make Delay your conversational default. Delay prevents premature action, buys time, and may allow solutions to emerge organically. A delayed issue that really belongs in the Now category will usually reappear quickly, at which point you can (and probably should) address it.
It’s best to delay without fanfare; just avoid or otherwise put off the conversation. If the other person knows that you are delaying and it bothers him, provide a legitimate external excuse if you have one (“I’m way behind on my e-mails from being out of town” or “I’m late for a meeting”) or offer another time to talk. If he won’t be delayed, let him talk without adding anything substantive. Don’t indicate that you think a delayed conversation is unimportant or an escalation could make it important for the wrong reason.
Some issues reflect highly emotional, incredibly complicated, and other volatile feelings that reside deep inside another person. While these kinds of problems occasionally crop up at work, they don’t have readily identifiable solutions—and may have no solution at all—so tackling them with a fix-it mentality can cause serious damage.
There are some emotional and sensitive issues that people have to wrestle with alone or with a professional counselor, clinician, or advisor. Provide support and encouragement when you sense that people need it, but in general, steer clear of Avoid issues unless there is absolutely no way around them and the issues are impairing the accomplishment of critical work.
Examples of Avoid category problems can include:
Problems stemming from a traumatic personal experience, like an accident or an incident
Pivotal childhood experiences that are buried under layers of time and imperfect, confusing memories
Issues of a deeply personal nature that are often extremely complicated and that frequently generate confusion and conflicting emotions when discussed
Complicated intrafamily conflicts that span multiple generations
There are a very small number of highly sensitive issues in the Avoid category, so placing more than a handful of issues in this category is almost certainly an indication that you’re avoiding problems that you should handle.
Most legitimate Avoid category issues are personal in nature and not routinely discussed at work. You are most likely to uncover Avoid problems as you get to know people in depth, with direct reports, or when you are involved in close collaboration. People you barely know or seldom work with will try hard to keep their Avoid issues to themselves. Should you stumble into an Avoid category problem, people will usually alert you with comments like “I’m trying to put that behind me,” “I’d rather not talk about it,” or “Let’s not go there.” Take them at their words.
Deeply personal and emotional issues like the examples on the previous list frequently defy understanding and don’t readily lend themselves to solutions. Such problems are usually in a person’s too-hard box for good reasons, so switch topics or tactfully end the conversation when an Avoid issue comes up. If the other person feels like talking—and if you want to listen—lend him your ears, but don’t actively probe for more information. Let your conversational partner decide how much he’s comfortable disclosing. You can always switch topics or exit if you feel like the conversation is pushing past the appropriate boundaries of your underlying relationship.
When an Avoid problem is hindering essential work, look for a way to temporarily or permanently address the issue and, when possible, encourage the other person to seek professional help for the issue if you think your relationship can support your being this direct. (For subordinates, you can be this direct. Point them to professional resources if an Avoid issue is impairing essential work tasks.)
For example, if a colleague is freezing up in front of a forceful client because the aggressive behavior reminds your coworker of an abusive parent, you can handle the interactions with the client for the next few months (temporary solution), you can interact with the client exclusively in the future (permanent solution), or you can encourage your colleague to seek professional help (possibly a permanent solution). If a subordinate is unproductive for hours at a time due to a traumatic accident or incident, you might reassign some of her key tasks while helping her access the proper resources to work through the issue. Hopefully, the professional help will lead to a positive permanent solution.
Today, billions of people in our human tribe—the tribe that loves to solve problems, take action, and keep up with the Smiths and Hus—are sending trillions of messages. It’s time to take a page from Dominique Jean Larrey’s playbook and stop trying to engage in all the conversations that come our way.6 It’s time to implement a functional conversational triage system. Once our triage system is in place, we can protect the discussions we do have from minor hazards by using conversational shock absorbers.