Communication. So important, right? I mean, it must be. Just browse the hallowed digital archives of the Harvard Business Review - there are over 6000 articles tagged with “communication”. “3 Situations Where Cross-Cultural Communications Breaks down”, “Get Your Message Across to a Skeptical Audience”, “Figure Out Your Managers Communications Style”. You get the idea.

Snappy, click-bait style articles are very popular, but it’s all a bit messy isn’t it? You can’t really expect to master a subject by article hopping. As a result, this kind of advice can be difficult to implement in the real world. Of course, you could read the hundreds of books and drab academic articles and completely immerse yourself in the world of communication. But who has time for that?

We do. In the four years of Hiri’s existence, we’ve read everything we can get our hands on so that we could build a better product. In this blog post we’ll cover some of the basics and give you some concrete tips you can use to manage ALL of your communications effectively. Read on...

Evolution, baby

A little background. We are literally walking, talking social computers. Humans have the highest brain to weight ratio of any animal. It evolved this way for one reason only - to handle complex social interaction. So you’d think we’d have it nailed by now. Not a chance.

For millions of years, humans hung out in small groups, reaching out from time to time to other groups for trade. Our brains developed accordingly, learning to maintain good, stable relationships with groups as large as 150 people (this is called Dunbar’s number, worth a Google). Even today, we tend to naturally organise ourselves into groups around this size. For example, the basic fighting unit of a modern army is the company - a company consists of about 130-150 soldiers.

Fast forward a few thousand years. How many people do you know? How many people have you met over your lifetime? It’s a lot more than 150. But unlike silicon CPU’s, our wonderful social computers don’t follow Moore’s law.

So how can a company like Walmart effectively manage 2.1 million people? And how are you and I supposed to navigate such a complicated organism? In both cases, we rely on technology. The most powerful technologies in the 20th century were communications methodologies. For example, I’m sure you’re familiar with ‘management by objectives (MBO)’, created by management guru Peter Drucker (who, coincidentally, coined the term “Knowledge worker” in 1959). MBO’s have been a rousing success. It was a simple way to ensure an employee understood that what they do day to day should relate to the overall objectives of the business. Bill Packard, founder of Hewlett-Packard went as far to say “No operating policy has contributed more to Hewlett-Packard's success”.

But in the 21st century, software is eating the world. And it’s not really surprising that many software companies are trying to solve communications problems.

Facebook, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Skype, Viber, Slack, Facetime, iMessage, Yammer and Hiri, our own email client, are attempting to change how we communicate. Although most of these tools started out as consumer products, they are slowly crossing over into the enterprise. For example, Facebook have introduced Facebook at work and Whatsapp now allow businesses to create accounts.

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