Engineering Communications

Does a bad (or badly worded) question automatically deserve a bad, vague, or sarcastic answer? Would no answer be a better alternative?

Does a quality question guarantee a quality response?

Is Google an adequate substitute for a person with hands-on experience?

CR4 is a community. People come here for various reasons - to chat with like-minded people, to bounce ideas around, or to ask questions. Some visitors may be "lurkers" that only read posts. Those who create and reply to discussions share their own knowledge and opinions.

It's a learning experience for everyone. I think that participating in discussions can be more thought-provoking than simply reading articles because of an increased level of involvement.

I'm interested to read your thoughts about this topic.

There's always been at least one canine member of my family. Communication with the family pet ranges from the simple command of "sit" to trying to figure out what might be ailing the pup. There are some lessons in communication with pets that area easily translated to improving your communication with people.

Speak the Same Language

A friend adopted a Labrador retriever. The dog was super-friendly and seemed eager to please. It was a few years old, but no matter what the family did, the dog would not listen. It didn't respond to sit, stay, lay down, or any of the other usual commands. Finally, a friend of the friend told the dog, "SIENTATE!" The dog promptly sat down. Turns out, it had previously lived with a Spanish-speaking family and did not understand English.

It seems like it should go without saying, but it's important to make sure that you're speaking the same language with someone when you're trying to communicate. Even English has its differences (English English vs. American English). Each industry has its own jargon and each company has its own terminology. I was recently working on a flow chart to introduce a new group to a business process. We have internal flow charts that explain the process in our own terms referring to proprietary tools and processes. To an outsider, the language may as well be gibberish, because the undefined jargon is meaningless.

Be Consistent

Some commands, like sit, are fairly universal in the dog world. Other times there may be multiple ways to tell a dog something. If you want the dog to get off the couch, one person might say "Off", another "Down" and a third "NO!!!!" If the dog lives in a household where everyone uses a different command and expects the same result, some are going to be disappointed.

Have you ever started a job at a new workplace? You may have been trained or received instruction from multiple people. Did they all use the same words to describe the same things? "The database", "Access", "db", or a specific tool name? They may all mean the same thing, but when you're trying to figure it out, it can be very confusing.

Check Your Tone

When you tell a dog "good girl" or "NO!", the two things not only mean something very different, but are also usually said in a different tone of voice. When giving a command, like calling a dog to come to you for its bath, what type of tone is likely to have the best results? You don't use your "NO!" voice because you don't want the dog to have a negative association with the bath.

Tone is a big part of communication. Even writing can take on a certain tone, although it is easily misinterpreted. Tone may vary by topic (announcing a company celebration vs. an unfortunate accident) or by audience (sending a personal email to a friend vs. correcting a direct report's behavior).

What have you learned from a furry friend that helps you communicate better with people?

What means of communication do you use in your career? Engineering involves applying scientific knowledge to solve problems. One key to doing this successfully is communication. A good engineer makes effective use of as many methods and tools of communication as possible. Over the years there have been many innovations and achievements by engineers that have changed our lives. A great portion of this success can be traced back to good communication among team members.

Good communication is not always easy. Engineers will often find themselves as part of a team, but not always physically with the team. The members could consist of engineers from all over the world. So the question is, how do we effectively communicate and collaborate? What have you found to be helpful to you or your co-workers? Tools, websites, communities and forums, email, Skype, texting, the list goes on. What do you find most effective in getting your ideas across accurately and easily? How do you think communication among engineers could be improved?

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I ran across this article predicting the end of office email.

I find email, as clogged as it is with junk, a nice way to get into the work mode and find out what is going on. As I sip my coffee, I browse through the inbox and get a sense of satisfaction as I delete the junk mail.

Is this the way you start your day, deleting the mounting number of junk emails? Filtering through the nonsense emails to find something you really need to know. Are instant-messaging tools and Facebook-style pages really the best way to replace the office email black hole? What ever happened to face to face? Of course many of us work remotely now, so face to face is not always possible, but do you really want to be interrupted by instant-messaging while you are hard at work on a project?

If IM and Facebook are the new trend, I guess I will have to adapt. What is the trend in your workplace?

Blogs and forums may be separate entities - or both components may appear on a single website like CR4. These two components of social sites were loosely defined in the introduction to this blog series. Let's take a closer look at them now.

Blogs

Joel Postman's book SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate addresses online communication strategies that are applicable to maintaining a blogging and forum website. Postman defines a blog as a "highly complex and very popular medium, with many bloggers having widespread influence". This influence may be used to inform, advertise, or gain popularity. A blog might exist on its own (like TechCrunch) or be on a website with a collection of blogs (like those found on CR4 or The New York Times).

Forums

Although bloggers are the conversation starters when they submit written work online, discussion forum users often drive the conversation in this medium. Users can post questions or comments or respond to what others have posted - these form "threads" of conversation. (Note that many blogs also allow comments in response to the original text.) A 2007 Technographics survey published in Groundswell found that a fifth of online Americans read or respond to discussion forums.

Many users establish online friendships and even cliques; according to Groundswell "forums and reviews succeed partly because they let people show off". Technical support websites rely greatly on a question and answer format in which users help one another.

Bringing it All Together

A community is more than a collection of blogs and forums - it is a group of users that interact with one another on a daily, hourly, or up-to-the-minute basis. Postman defines a community as being similar to a blog or forum but as being "designed to accommodate larger numbers of participants in a slightly different manner".

CR4, for example, is organized by topic (Automotive, Mechanical Engineering, General, etc.) and caters to a common interest (engineering, scientific, and technical professionals). Postman also suggests that "community management is usually decentralized, with control and responsibility for upkeep divided among a handful of dedicated, inspired (and often unpaid) members". CR4's moderators are paid; however, they are GlobalSpec employees who must also complete their regular work at the same time.

Editor's Note: This is the second in a multi-part series about social sites. You may want to go back and read the Introduction if you missed it. The next part will cover moderation as a function of social sites.

References:

Li, Charlene, and Josh Bernoff. Groundswell. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2008. Print.

Postman, Joel. SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2009. Print.

Communication with an organization's audience can take place through many formats. A forum and blog site, for example, is more than a collection of opinions, research, and comments. It is also a place where conversations take place and online relationships evolve. This information can then be found by others on the Internet.

In the early days of the Internet, static web pages served as online repositories of information. With Web 2.0 came the possibility for users to create content. This information is easily found by search engines. Forums are web sites where users can participate in online discussions about nearly any topic.

Types of Community Sites

Many community sites are divided into two types:

• Forums - Some forums focus on rating and reviewing products, others are for answering questions, and others are simply for discussing certain topics. Many individuals participate in these types of sites because they like the psychic rewards that come from sharing. Psychic rewards, as defined in the book Groundswell, are "good feelings from altruism, validation, and belonging to a community".
  
  
• Blogs - Blogs, on the other hand, are authored typically by one person or a handful of people. Users can comment on the content of blogs. In a public relations context, blogs are often used to relay corporate information that is too long to be included in a press release. They can also include product information or the state of a website. Users generate content in the form of the comments they leave on blogs.

Site moderation is typically done on both types of community sites, and involves reviewing and acting upon irrelevant, inappropriate, and negative content. It is necessary to keep users in check when they cross the line. Site moderation itself evolves as a community changes. The goal is to understand and improve moderation as a function between users (external relations) and moderators (internal relations).

Real-Life Examples

The computer company Dell has a customer support forum where users can ask and answer questions about its products. By helping one another in this way, it's estimated that this forum has saved Dell over $1 million in customer support phone calls.

Likewise, Lego spreads information about its products through a forum called LUGNET. It uses brand ambassadors who are paid in Lego bricks to steer the conversation within the community. It is estimated that this program has increased adult Lego purchases by $500,000. As these examples illustrate, forums can be used to supplement a corporate web site.

Do you prefer to turn to an online community for answers or do you look to a company's technical support staff when you have questions?

Editor's Note: This is the first in a multi-part series about social sites. More entries will appear soon.

References:

Li, Charlene, and Josh Bernoff. Groundswell. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2008. Print.