The other day I wrote about the importance of being honest and how it’s not uncommon for early stage startups in particular to experience some complications due to lack of communication.
A few days after I wrote that post I fell over a TechCrunch article/ interview with the co-founders of Twitter, Evan Williams and Biz Stone. The written part of the post talks about their advice to communicate as much as possible and the lessons they’ve learnt from communicating too little.
As is mentioned in the post and as most of us probably can relate to from a variety of situations in life, just because you’ve shared your vision or opinion around where something is going doesn’t mean that everyone else remembers or shares the same vision. To them what you’ve said might and actually probably looks quite different and that’s why communicating more rather than less is so important in order to ensure that you and your team are on the same page. It goes for your products, for your company as a whole and not the least what you want to get out of startup life and how you see it working. Particularly, if you like me embark on it for the first time. The founders of Twitter put it this way:
The other thing I think is, be really open and communicative with your co-founders about what exactly it is you want out of work and out of your life. Because otherwise, you’ll make assumptions about each other and you’ll be missing each other, and that will lead to a discordance.
– Evan Williams, co-founder Twitter
The unspoken is often what causes problems. Or rather the assumptions that are made around the unspoken. Some conversations are trickier to have and some seem unnecessary. But the danger with not having them is that you start basing decisions on assumptions and assumptions by nature are just that. It’s something you take for granted rather than have verified wether it holds true or not. And when it comes to building a company or product that can land you in all sorts of unnecessary problems. So as much possible, have the conversations one time too many rather than one time to few and at least then you know that you’re on the same path, or that you’re not and can address the issue sooner rather than later.
Tomorrow – Day 273 | Touched & surprised
Image source: www.flickr.com/photos/bobsfever/6753773459
