Our class continues – catch up on Communication 101 and 102 if you missed them earlier. We are arming you with the simple communication framework essential to our organizations’ success.
My young kid loves knock-knock jokes, or at least the cadence of a knock-knock joke.
But that doesn’t always mean she understands if, or why, the joke she’s telling is funny. In those cases, I haven’t prepared her with just enough proper background and context.
So when she tells this old one, “knock knock-who’s there-banana-banana who?-knock knock-who’s there-banana-banana who?-knock knock-who’s there-orange-orange who?-orange you glad I didn’t say banana?” … she doesn’t necessarily know it’s funny because it breaks the traditional knock knock joke model, and “orange” kind of sounds like “aren’t you.”
Jokes are funny when people understand just enough context. Likewise, context gives engagements meaning, too.
That was a long story with a dumb joke, but it helps me make another point. There’s a key phrase in here: “just enough.” Because, oh man, I’ve got background and context to share. On most topics, I can dig into operational history, intel analyses, media and open-source reports, all the commander’s guidance we’ve received. We cannot go into all of the details. We will not.
When we know what we want to achieve through engagement, and we’ve considered our audience’s opinions and knowledge, we can fill in the gaps with just the necessary information, leaving out the superfluous stuff.
(Photo by Lance Cpl. Micah Pierce, DVIDS)
