Don’t make yourself a communication bottleneck
It’s Wednesday morning, so time for a new principle for Biotech data teams. This one continues with the theme of coordination across teams:
The most effective form of communication across functions and specialties is direct communications between individuals in each team
In long-established, mature fields like mechanical engineering, it’s possible that a leader can understand a project clearly enough that they can work out most of the details with their colleagues in other teams, then communicate this down to their own team. Making themselves a communication bottleneck is efficient and ensures that the information that gets transmitted is consistent and up to date.
In a complex and constantly evolving field like Biotech, on the other hand, it doesn’t work like that. It’s impossible for you, or any other individual, to understand all the details of what needs to happen, let alone all the opportunities that may arise as the context changes. The team members who will understand the details and see the opportunities are the ones doing the work at the bottom of the org chart.
As everyone’s understanding evolves, this new information must be communicated to individuals across multiple teams. So if you make yourself a bottleneck, you just add overhead. And since your understanding will evolve as fast as anyone else’s, you won’t even be able to ensure consistency.
Instead, you need to rely on other tricks to keep information consistent and up to date (as much as possible). For example, having clear, properly scoped objectives and empathy for your colleagues, as in those principles from a few weeks ago, will help keep everyone’s understanding of the context consistent even if the details are in flux.
Don’t make yourself a communication bottleneck.
An analogy made between communications and the flow of water. You've mentioned three items I really liked. "clear, properly scoped objectives", "empathy for your colleagues", and "context consistent"
Water regulators are used between the reservoir and the home to prevent damage and provide safety. Cleverly, a regulator will have a spring loaded diaphragm which will constrict and narrow when the incoming water pressure is too high, reducing the amount of water passing through it. Likewise, when the pressure drops the the spring relaxes and the diaphragm widens, increasing the flow.
Typically, there is also an adjustment screw for the spring tension.
Individual humans, and teams are not equipped to handle a firehose of communication. A key function of each management layer is to provide a communications regulator, so that information flow can be absorbed and utilized.
Professional Empathy is a good place to start.