This article is the transcript of a spoken talk. The brain and behaviour mechanisms described are simplified for a general audience and are not clinical guidance. Sources for the research referenced appear at the end.
Hi, I am Floyd, founder of NEUVERO. As a software VP I led global teams, and now I use neuroscience to help unlock the potential in individuals and organizations. At NEUVERO, we focus on improving the bandwidth between brains, helping people communicate and connect more clearly and accurately. Why does that matter?
Because in a world that's increasingly abstract and conceptual, accurate communication is becoming a competitive advantage. Software, for example, is not easy to see. It's not like a fence or a bridge. You can't see it, touch it or measure it in the same way. It's not so easy to zoom out and see the whole thing and then zoom into inspect a single bolt on a support. The result? Really smart people can leave a two hour meeting with completely different impressions of what was discussed or agreed upon. Why? Because the bandwidth between our brains is limited. You've probably heard the old communication story. There's what I thought, what I said, what I thought I said, and then what you heard, what you thought you heard, and what you thought I was saying.
It's messy and here's why. First, the idea in my mind might not be clear. I might abstract too far and miss details or focus in too narrowly and miss context, introducing errors in my own mental model. Second, translating thought into language introduces errors. I might choose the wrong word or speak ambiguously.
My words might evoke unintended connotations. And third, I make assumptions about what you already know or believe. And sometimes you even get frustrated when you don't get it. Forgetting that I never fully explained it in the first place.
There simply isn't enough time or cognitive bandwidth to communicate everything perfectly. So I make assumptions that despite what I said or what I thought I said, you understood what I meant to say. And on the receiving end, you might have a different mental model. One that overlaps with mine, but not completely because our brains are wired to pattern match you might look for signs that we agree and overlook discrepancies. Other brains look for differences and overlook points of agreement, possibly pattern matching prior experiences of conflict. You might also tune out for a moment. You might be tired, distracted, or self-critical. Imposter syndrome thoughts like, I'm too dumb to get this.
Or arrogance, I could fix this in five minutes if I was running things or judgments like this person's too dumb often get in the way, and when there are gaps, your brain automatically fills 'em with your own preconceived notions, which could be wrong. In software and engineering, we like to think we're purely rational, but often we hold thoughts in positions with more emotional charge than we realize.
Imagine you're in a design review and the normally upbeat architect shoots down every idea. You get frustrated, tensions rise, and then at lunch you find out that her dog had passed away that weekend. Context changes everything. So what's the cost of poor communication?
Projects fail. Teams build different things. APIs don't talk to each other, and most importantly, the potential to solve problems and change the world for the better is lost. And this is a big deal.
When you're in a small team and you misunderstand your colleague, it's fine because the next day you're gonna see them in the coffee room and have the chance again to ask, what did you mean by that?
You have lots of time to repair those errors in communication, but when you're leading 5,000 people, you don't get that luxury. If a phrase lands the wrong way with a team, in an all hands, it might be six months before you visit that lab and have a chance to repair it. If you miscommunicate with your peer running another large organization, the error could cost months of effort or obscure an opportunity for world changing innovation.
So why does that matter to you if you're not running 5,000 people? Let's look at a world empowered by AI. So on the weekend I sat down and I built a prototype using Replit. It wasn't a huge thing, but I could see very quickly that I, as an individual contributor, could generate a much more complex system in a much shorter period of time than I could have even a few months ago.
So what this means is that every individual can now create huge systems and huge areas of behavior that are not well understood by people who have to integrate with it. By your colleagues or even by your customers. So communication errors between colleagues creating this much complex behavior have much bigger effects.
I'd love to hear what you think of this thesis. How is inaccurate communication getting in your way? Does it matter? What is the best way NEUVERO could engage to make this better in your unique situation? Let us know in the comments below or reach out for a conversation. We look forward to it.
References
- Coupé, C., Oh, Y. M., Dediu, D., & Pellegrino, F. (2019). Different languages, similar encoding efficiency: Comparable information rates across the human communicative niche. Science Advances, 5(9), eaaw2594. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594
- Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 87-114. doi:10.1017/s0140525x01003922
- Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81-97. doi:10.1037/h0043158
- Arnsten, A. F. T. (2009). Stress signaling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 410-422. doi:10.1038/nrn2648
Adapted from the Neuvero video Why Communication Bandwidth Matters. Related: The Human Harness: how the same limited working memory shapes what happens inside a single mind.