There was a blond lady who boarded an airplane and took a seat in first class.  However, she only had a coach class ticket.  The stewardess came to her and informed the blond that she had to move back to coach class.  To this the blond responded “I’m blond, I’m beautiful and I am going to California.”  Taken aback the stewardess got the head steward to talk to the blond woman.  When the steward informed her she had to move the response was the same, “I’m blond, I’m beautiful and I am going to California.”  The steward got the co-pilot who talked to the woman and the same response was given, I’m blond, I’m beautiful and I am going to California.”  Finally they went to get the pilot to talk to the blond. 

The Pilot Knew Exactly What To Do...

The pilot responded that his wife was also blond and he knew exactly what to do.  He went to the lady and whispered something in her ear to which the blond sprang up and sprinted back to coach class.  Flabbergasted the rest of the staff looked at the pilot and asked him what he told the woman.  “Simple”, he replied, “I told her that first class wasn’t going to California.”

This is a humorous anecdote meant not to poke fun at people with blonde hair, but to illustrate the importance of delivering a message in a way that can be understood.  In most cases, when communicating there is a need to understand who you are communicating with.  For instance, if you are speaking English to a person who speaks French then there is no understanding that can take place between you.  This same concept holds true when talking about an online case management system (which is a very technical and modern thing) but trying to explain this to a case worker who has been doing things on paper for 30 years.  It is a very large and complex transition for them and when communicating it really needs to be done in a certain way.  As in the example above there are times when it really doesn’t need to be explained in a straight forward way or even in a way that makes sense to the technical person.  Often it is necessary to just explain it in a way that the person you are talking to can understand but which makes no sense to you.

Knowing WHO You Are Talking To, Helps How You Communicate

If one thing can be taken from this post - it is that when communicating with others it is important to take into account who you are talking to.  Sometimes when explaining things it is necessary to explain them in a way that makes sense to the person you are talking to, but not necessarily to you.  Often times the phrase “it works because it works” is sufficient without having to go into unnecessary details about why.  To this end I simply will say to remember the importance of understanding who you are speaking to and take this into account rather than explaining things the way that you would understand them.