Why Communication Breaks Down

What if you only had to say it once?

This morning I shouted from my bedroom as I was making the bed,

"Hey, babe, can you pour me a cup of coffee?"

My husband didn't hear me so I said it again. Then again. I think I said it like three times from 2 rooms away, while I kept making the bed. This is a bad habit of mine. I believe it started in the name of "efficiency."

I know and understand that the fix, is probably to walk to the kitchen and pour it myself or to ask him face to face. Done and done.

I call this the human latency problem and I see this a lot in how teams communicate with each other.

A slack message sits unread.

A team writes three rounds of clarifying docs instead of hopping on a 5 minute call.

An engineer explains a fix to a customer using only words that make sense internally with the company.

Every time, the information technically got sent, like my request for a cup of coffee, but it just didn't land.

So you send it again.

And again.

And again.

This is where projects stall, because there is a gap between, "I said it" and "they understood it."

This is where team communication breaks down, customers are left confused and projects go to die.

I believe clear communication is a super skill and the quickest path between two people who need to understand each other, and most of us default to the slow one out of habit.