Communication on Monique Mudama

(Don't) use your words

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 11:17:42 -0600

Early in my career, I took a class on written communication. I don’t remember most of it, but one moment is seared in my memory. The instructor told us to write for a sixth grade reading level. This seemed like nonsense to me, especially at an aerospace company. “But what if the perfect word just happens to be more advanced?” Too bad, he said. Find a different way to say it.

A master class in persuasion

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 16:52:24 -0600

Against all odds, a stranger saves me from myself Link to heading

I’d been looking forward to this trip for months. I’d already paid for the condo. I hadn’t seen my friends in a year. The sunk cost fallacy was hard at work. So here I was, driving through falling snow on unplowed Wyoming service roads. I could see the highway, which my phone insisted was closed. I had confidence in my car, my tires, and my driving ability - but as I watched the occasional vehicle on the highway, I didn’t have confidence in my phone’s directions. Nevertheless, I was convinced that I could still make it to Jackson in 10 hours as planned. Maybe 11. I just needed to know which route to take.

How (not) to build good working relationships

Sun, 05 Feb 2023 16:39:08 -0600

Adventures in intercontinental relationship building Link to heading

A few years ago, I was assigned to a project that required significant work from two teams. I was part of a team in the US. The other team was in India. Any possible meeting times would be outside of normal business hours for at least one of the two teams. My team (myself included!) resisted meetings - we wanted to use offline tools as much as possible, even when the team in India wanted to meet with us. Thus, from the very start of the project, we only talked to each other when we needed to resolve important conflicts. Sounds good, right? Living the dream - communicating asynchronously and keeping the project moving 24/7.