Communications Breakdown

There's always the question, if we encounter other intelligent life forms – will we be able to communicate?

A couple of my colleagues, an Israeli and an American, were having a hallway conversation about the political systems in their countries. Both are extremely intelligent and each thought his country has the more logical system.

Having been raised in Israel, the Israeli’s arguments made more sense to me at first. But overtime, when the American explained the American system, it dawned on me – I was judging the American system through my Israeli experience, but when the American explained it, I finally started seeing how it made sense.

In Israel, we are accustomed to immediacy – there’s a coalition, and a power struggle determines what happens now based on who’s in power and the powers that have leverage on them – there’s a showdown every day. In the US it is a process. The pressures and shaping of a president work like a stream resulting in an emerging pebble, the president, who is shaped by the journey. That president's term is now the stream, shaping the next pebble. I'm not sure which system is worse :) – however, I know judging one system based on what I knew about the other lead me to prejudice.

At work I see this everyday. Marketers fail to understand creative folks who in turn fail to empathize with programmers who don't get the product managers at all. Even product managers who are siloed from each other can lead different parts of the product into different directions. Realizing that has lead me to become an avid supporter of team work and involving everyone in the process in the earliest stage possible. Ownership, while important for the ego, or maybe because of it, forces people to listen and understand. Being part of an assembly line makes people care about the part they are assembling and resent anything that disrupts that process.

So before we encounter other intelligent life forms, lets try to communicate with the ones we already know.