Redefining Workplace Communication, with Ken Madren, PermaTherm, Inc.
Ken Madren: One of the things that we’re doing at PermaTherm that is helping mitigate some past misunderstandings and miscommunications on the common words is we delete them. We don’t use the word “work” because work has so many definitions.
Can you believe that? Can you believe that the word “work” has more than one definition? It literally has a very definition from each person who walks in the door, what time does my day start? What time is my day in this is how I would work it. This is how you would work it. I’m working and they are.
So we change the names of things like that, that are critical paths and processes. And we make some pretty silly names out of things like work. For example, that word when we talk shop is now “keyholing.” It’s time to keyhole. What’s that? And we may be talking about progressing projects through our pipeline.
You would typically go work the pipeline. And there’s a lot of different ways to work the pipeline, but there’s one way at PermaTherm. And we’re talking about working the pipeline, but our best practices require that we keyhole The pipeline. When you do that, you destabilize everybody who’s supposed to keyhole the pipeline because no one knows what that is.
But when you build that definition together, everybody knows what that is. And we’ve found that to be an insidious eroder of progress. And we’ve found that simple element of take a word that everybody knows. Throw it in the trash can as it relates to critical process and come up with a new word and everybody define it together.
Now, really only a few people are leading that discussion, but you will find when it’s a word like keyhole, everybody wants to understand it because their job is, and everybody does add a piece or there. And in the end you, when you’re talking, everybody knows what you’re talking about. So in my career, it seemed like the silliest of things to do.
Everybody knows what work is. It’s been one of the most productive things. And there’s other instances like that, but that’s just one example of language and what we all think is good communication and how it can impede progress within your organization.
Listen to Ken’s full ProfitSense with Bill McDermott interview here.
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