“Communication is the key.” We have probably heard this more times than we care to count throughout our career. We communicate on a daily basis to our family, friends, clients, supervisors, and subordinates. How often have you asked yourself, “What went wrong? How could I possibly have been misunderstood?” One method that will help with the answer is the communication square (or “Four Ear Model”) by Friedemann Schultz von Thun. 

In my first post in this series, I briefly discussed my experience of reading the book The High Performance HMI Handbook, the initial skepticism I felt and how I started to come around to their ideas. In this and subsequent posts, I’ll be sharing a few of the concepts the authors discuss. These are concepts that seem so simple but they aren’t often used. And yet, if they were implemented in our HMIs it would go a long way toward improving the usefulness of our HMIs for us and our operators.

A chunk of my world today revolves around following up on my kids.  Confirming they do what they are supposed to do or hounding them if they don't do it.  I spend entirely too much time checking and rechecking that they: