Building a “Culture of Why”: Communication as Culture

A rugby ball on a grass field above the words "Winners Ask Why". Based on a photo by Rorisang Ditake on Unsplash

In my new communication business, my big focus is “communication as systems and culture.”

We tend to think of communication as a skill that individuals are good or bad at. And that’s true as far as it goes…

…but whether individuals are good communicators or bad communicators doesn’t mean much if the organization’s communication systems aren’t working, or if its culture discourages good communication.

Today, I’d like to talk about an element of workplace culture no one ever seems to mention.

It’s making sure your workplace has a Culture of Why.

This one change, if done right, can drastically improve both the morale of your teams and the success of your projects.

That’s why I’m about to share some of the information that you’d normally get in several email follow-ups to my freebie 5 Communication Gaps to Look for in Your Organization. That free PDF helps teams identify their systemic communication gaps, one of which is working without the “why.”

Working without the “why” is when people assign tasks without explaining their purpose and context. And unless you’re trying to train the next Jason Bourne, this is a serious problem that needs to be fixed.

But before we talk about how to fix it, we need to understand why it’s a serious problem. Because until we understand why, we don’t get serious about fixing it.

Which is my point in a nutshell.

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New service: communication coaching! (With FREEBIE)

Communication problems making life hard in your company, organization, or group? The Detail Woman LLC now offers communication coaching! To celebrate, I’ve made a freebie to give you a small taste of how I think about communication systemically, and what sorts of problems this coaching can address for growing organizations. Communication is more than just … Read more

The S&N Financial Independence Series is go!

Today I have something fantastic to announce: the first “S&N (Sarah & Nadine) Financial Independence Series” publication by my sister in planning, Nadine Edwards! This series is a collaborative effort to help translators and other freelancers escape the fight-or-flight response to money issues by starting conversations and providing tools address our needs. It started with … Read more

Life Happens

I’d planned to end the week with a tiny update of miscellanea on emergency planning. I’m still doing that, but originally it was going to be upbeat, and it hasn’t quite turned out that way. Still, here’s your emergency planning quickie: 1. And lo, planning works! Almost a year ago, I had a hard drive … Read more

Emergency Business Planning: Illness & Injury

Image of an emergency room door and sign saying "Emergency" Image source: morguefile.com. Used under license.

In my first post about emergency business planning, I asked the question, “What can go wrong?” That was a little terrifying, but now for the good news: Once we know what can go wrong, we’re ready to start strategizing!

You will probably have noticed that some disasters I listed on the “What could go wrong?” list were qualitatively different than others. #4 in particular is in a category of its own: “I could become sick or injured.”

Hopefully none of us will spend too much of our time so ill that we can’t work, but both short- and long-term illness/injury can happen to anyone, of any age. So we need to prepare for this. We don’t want short-term health problems to impact our client relationships, and we don’t want long-term ones to tank our businesses!

In preparing for this piece, I put together my own knowledge, my research, and notes from an interview with a friend who has unfortunately encountered this particular emergency. Here’s what I came up with:

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Happy 2015! Do You Have an Emergency Business Plan?

Sign pointing to the emergency evacuation slide of a ship. Photo by JPPI at Morguefile.com. Used under license.

Happy New Year! Yes, it’s January, that month when many of us think about what we want our lives to be like. We ask ourselves, Do I need to lose weight? Do I want to quit a bad habit? What do I want to accomplish most? We all know the “resolutions” drill.

But if you’re a freelancer or you run a business, there’s an urgent question that you may not be asking: Do I have an emergency plan for my business?

Any month is a good month to safeguard your business, but I’ve decided to devote this January to blogging about my emergency-preparedness plan for my translation business. Today’s post is all about the first step: admitting that eventually, there’s going to be a problem.

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Backing Up Your Records in TO3000 Version 10

Image of a CHKDSK scan result showing that an unspecified error occurred.

Most of us translators realize that one of the worst things that could happen to our businesses is a hardware failure, theft, or other event that wipes out all our data. We’ve all been told, “Back everything up, because you never know.” We know we need backups for our business security and our own peace of mind. Some of us are even paranoid enough to have both a physical backup and a cloud backup (of any data not too sensitive for one).1

I’m not a perfect person (ask my family), so when my computer’s hard drive died recently, I didn’t have everything backed up, but I had the essentials: my term bases, my translation memories, my personal photos, my financial records… However, when I got a new hard drive, reinstalled all my programs, and attempted to restore everything, I hit a couple of snags.

Quicken data? Fine. MemoQ resources/projects? Fine, if you know where to put everything. TO3000 Version 10? Tears of blood.

So here’s what I learned about backing up and restoring those records… Because it is a whole world of not-fun to be missing them at tax time.

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Demon Parades and Career Beginnings

Though I didn’t manage to post about it before due to computer issues, I had two public speaking opportunities in January that were pretty fun. First, I gave a workshop at Texas A&M University’s Stark Galleries. They’re hosting an ukiyo-e exhibit called “The Floating World” through next month, so part of their family-friendly event series … Read more