Dear Member:

In a podcast conversation with Kevin Rutherford recently, we discussed the pros and cons of communication through emails, blogs, and texts versus real conversation in person or via the telephone. In business today I feel there are many misinterpretations and misunderstandings directly resulting from one-way communication and unfortunately almost 100% of our current generation prefer using one-way communication as the only channel available.

We both agreed that the biggest negative about this is the lack of nuance. You just can’t identify that through emails.

Kevin dug back into his treasured trove of trivial wisdom and recalled a psychological example of how dangerous the lack of context and/or nuance can be in using our language. I thought I would share this with our membership below:

                With this eight word sentence you can change its entire meaning eight times by emphasizing each of the eight words.

                “I never said your sister stole my money.”

                “I never said” (someone else did)

                “I never said” (not ever, never did)

                “I never said your sister…” (I actually printed it)

                “I never said your sister…” (it was someone else’s sister)

                “I never said your sister stole” (it was your brother)

                “I never said your sister stole my…” (I gave it to her)

                “I never said your sister stole my money” (it was someone else’s)

                “I never said your sister stole my money” (it was actually just a piece of cake)

Is it any wonder that one of the first counter measures to mitigate fraudulent activity is to confirm with whom you’re dealing by making a phone call? In today’s strange world even that stop-gap has been made impotent and unreliable because AI can kidnap not only one’s identity but their voice as well. I guess we need to go back to the old standby – what’s your mother’s maiden name?