{"id":502,"date":"2011-09-16T23:40:24","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T23:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=502"},"modified":"2025-06-24T22:12:41","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T22:12:41","slug":"divided-by-a-common-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/divided-by-a-common-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Divided By A Common Language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is some doubt over the attribution of this quote, however there is absolutely no doubt in my mind of its truth &#8211; and not just between nations as originally suggested but between all sorts of groups who have developed their own &#8216;local&#8217; language variants.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I read this on LinkedIn<\/p>\n<div class=\"quotecenter\"><em><strong>Business people should learn IT language ?<\/strong><br \/>\nWe often hear that IT people should use business language when interacting with business people but we rarely hear the opposite (business people using IT language). Isn&#8217;t this divide inconsiderate and a hinder to creating effective organisations ?<\/em><\/div>\n<p>This is actually a rather old discussion on LinkedIn that I came across only this week.<\/p>\n<p>My initial reaction was \u201cwhoa!! Isn\u2019t this the wrong question\u201d?\u00a0 There is no doubt in my mind that \u2018IT people\u2019 and \u2018business people\u2019 do not speak the same language BUT whilst improved communication would help, improved understanding is what is at the root of this \u2018divide\u2019 and many others.\u00a0 We could say the same thing about \u201csoftware people\u201d and \u201csystems people\u201d; about \u201cproject management people\u201d and \u201cengineering people\u201d; and so on.<\/p>\n<p>We each develop our own personal language and we each, as we form groups, develop a certain amount of group language.\u00a0 It is inevitable.\u00a0 As long as it is recognised it need not be a problem.\u00a0 The problem is caused by each person assuming that the others know what he is talking about simply because they recognise the words.<\/p>\n<p>If a German, an Italian, a Spaniard and a Norwegian were gathered together in a room all talking in their native language there would be no doubt that there would be limited understanding.\u00a0 Why should it be any different when it is an accountant, a computer programmer, a salesman and a manager?<\/p>\n<p>However, I don\u2019t believe that just \u2018using\u2019 the language of the other \u2018tribes\u2019 is necessarily sufficient to create effective organisations \u2013 rather we have to ensure that there is a common language (ontology?) that is understood by all and, importantly, we do not make the assumption that the person we are talking to actually understands everything we say.<\/p>\n<p>Certainly I feel that any viewpoint that goes along the lines \u201cthe other party will have to learn to understand me\u201d is doomed to failure.\u00a0 We must all learn to communicate better in ways that are suitable for the format, medium and context of the communication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is some doubt over the attribution of this quote, however there is absolutely no doubt in my mind of its truth &#8211; and not just between nations as originally suggested but between all sorts of groups who have developed their own &#8216;local&#8217; language variants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[79,96],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ignorance","tag-cognition","tag-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3063,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions\/3063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}