The Cure for Miscommunication

What’s the cure for miscommunication? It’s not perfect communication. It’s not more information. It’s far simpler.

The cure for miscommunication is to shorten the feedback loop.

Seth Godin writes:

The challenge of communication isn’t to never miscommunicate, it’s to cut down the time between the interaction and the realization that the communication didn’t get through. Because the sooner we know we’re not connecting, the sooner we can fix it.

We will always miscommunicate. Our best hope for improvement is feedback. This means the secret to good communication is actually listening.