Getting the Message Across, Virtually
In the vernacular, there’s a saying that goes, maraming namatay sa akala. It means that it’s not always wise to assume that a person has understood what you mean, or has gotten your message.
This did in me today.
Early on, I emailed my one team about interlinking. By this I meant that we link other pages of the site or other relevant information in the site to every relevant entry. I even included in that email, examples of interlinking, and some how to’s.
At first, I didn’t even think the samples and how to’s were necessary, thinking that I was dealing with a team who knew about this stuff already.
As I would check their reports, I found out that many of them got it. So I assumed that everyone understood it, too.
I was dead wrong!
All the while I thought this team member got what I meant by interlinking. Then just by a hunch, I checked on the links in her entries, and there I found out that she was not interlinking at all!
I panicked and so checked the outputs of other team members. Good thing, they were doing it correctly. Only one was doing it incorrectly. I called her attention to it, and my fears were confirmed. So now, she would be editing her entries, and we’d be wasting precious time doing rework.
Lessons learned:
- do not assume anything especially when you’re communicating with your team through emails and chat
- make a follow through when communication is virtual in nature
- monitor constantly, not regularly, of how your team is making progress
- I also notice that when you slacken your monitoring, they also slacken their focus