Getting the message

Sometimes we just don't get it. And nobody is worse at this than I am. I'm sure it's happened to you; someone says something and you totally miss the point. Or there's a big road sign (especially speed limits) and you drive happily by without noticing it. Or you're busy on a project and you simply don't hear someone who's calling to get your attention. The reason's simple enough, you have your own agenda and you're blind, or deaf to the unexpected. It works two ways. Sometimes you're so confident that you don't hear the bad news, and sometimes you're so anxious or pessimistic that you are always anticipating the worst scenario and can't come to terms with it when your luck changes. In "Mammoth Strategies," Tork and Grunt struggled to communicate the idea of a single community with their fellow tribes-folk because the people rejected the idea out of hand. It had never been something they'd considered, so they were incapable of coming to terms with it.

It happened to me last week. I had an email with some very exciting news, but I simply didn't see it until the third time I read the message. It was unexpected, and I certainly wasn't programmed to expect anything positive from that particular quarter. Perhaps it would have been easier to hear the message on the phone, or better still, see the expression on the face, and then I might have guessed what was coming, or at least been more receptive to that particular communication.

When you have something important to say, you have to choose how you're going to say it, the medium needs to be appropriate to the message. In the heydays of the 60's Marshall McLuhan's book first claimed that the "Medium is the Message" then, thanks to an error at the printers, the book was published with the title "The Medium is the Massage." Because, in reality it's both. If you put enough hype and energy behind a message you can whip up an audience to be enthusiastic about anything.... as television demonstrates with tedious frequency.

When you want to be sure your message reaches your audience, the more routes you use, the more likely you are to get through.