Wilo's Law and Mature Communications Processes

A popular quote in the agile community is Wilo's Law. It's one that states hey it's not my fault no one understands me, Wilo's Law says...

How all human communication fails, except by accident

Wilo claims human communication fails because of these items. Here are some corrective or preventative actions for these potential causes. Like nearly every observed problem, there is some underlying cause and Root Cause Analysis is the first step in assessing this undesirable condition to determine if it is correctable or preventable.

To make some conjecture that some process will fix the problem - Estimates are the smell of dysfunction and NOT Estimating will fix that dysfunction - is naive at best and willfully ignorant of Root Cause Analysis at worse.

Here's a quick assessment of Wilo's Law with simple corrective or preventative actions

• Language differences - badly written and poorly understood English
  • Learn the language
  • Read a book on good writing
  • Take a course on how to write well
  • Hire a technical writer
• Cultural differences - the wider the audience the more they will fail to meet your assumptions
  • Learn these differences and incorporate them in your writing and communication
• Personal differences - any assumption about the prior knowledge on the subject matter fails for any reasonably large audience
  • Validate assumptions
  • Document your assumptions
  • Test your assumption
  • Remember what ASSUME actually means - assuming makes an "ass" out of you and me - Jerry Belson
• Lost data - the listener doesn't pay attention as a critical moment and misses something indispensable
  • Document needed information in writing
  • Avoid Verbal Orders is a critical process in any critical situation

We were attending a Christmas cocktail party this afternoon. One of the children (all in their late 20's and 30's) is a professional writer in Chicago, a graduate English literature major from the University of Chicago. I started talking about the lack of writing skills in our space and defense community. On our proposals, we have professional editors, that make sure the works of the engineers are winning content. 

When I saw a Twitter post mentioning Wilo's law from a #NoEstimates advocate, it reminded me of the common approach in this paradigm and others, to point out symptoms and never address the Cause.

"There is always someone who knows better than you what you meant with your message" ~Wiio's Laws

There are several mandatory texts needed for successful proposal writing. For a proposal for a manned spacecraft or a grant proposal for molecular plant biology that our son works on. The first book is Beyond Bullet Points, Clif Atkinson. The 1st Editon is my favorite. Here's a summary of that book.

The next book is Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation and the 3rd book is Do I Make Myself Clear: Why Writing Matters, Harold Evans. In this last book, Evans shows how to write clear, concise, and powerful content. It's this last book that is the summary of our proposal writing materials. And it's this last book that can correct the root cause of Wilo's Law, and remove Wilo's Law as an excuse for not being able to communicate or blaming the listener for not understanding. Take responsibility for good communication

We have friends whose husband is an English Professor here at CU Boulder, teaching engineering, science, and pre-med student to write. It's a thankless job. His students are prime candidates for Wilo's Law. The writing class he teaches is mandatory in the engineering and science department. 

When you hear someone quoting Wilo's Law and they do not provide a preventative or corrective action, it is likely they themselves are producing poorly understood communication.
Go find the preventative and corrective actions, and remove yourself from the result of poor communications.

So when you hear "There is always someone who knows better than you what you meant with your message" you'll then know the person using that quote is likely the source of the miscommunication, not the person listening. It's not for the listener to be clear, concise, informative, it's the speaker or writer. You'll have found the cause and can then take preventative or corrective action.

Any successful technical communication needs to have:

• Measures of Effectiveness
• Measures of Performance
• Technical Performance Measures
• Key Performance Parameters

If your message has any hope of being communicated properly. Without these measures, there will always be someone who will interpret what you think you communicated in the wrong way. It's up to you to start with good communication, NOT the listener to interpret it in the way you thought you meant it and then you involk Wilo's Law as the excuse for your poor communication skills.

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