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A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
The mental model CATER will help you recall the five techniques that improve collaboration and team dynamics. CATER does two big things necessary for all greatly facilitated sessions. The mental model creates comparable knowledge among participants and opens feedback channels for successful collaboration.
CATER is a mental model that identifies the core components of a system and helps you wrap your head around how the components interact. [Read more…]
Things get a little dirty when humans get involved. In any system, human involvement can sometimes cause delays or issues. Here are some effective communication and facilitation secrets for reliability engineers.
Communication is the exchange of information from one person to another.
Communication requires a sender, a receiver, and a message. Technical professionals (sender) usually believe the decision maker (receiver) cannot understand the message because the decision maker is not as smart as they are. Most of the time, the lack of understanding comes from the noise the sender generates. The burden of effective communication is on the send (technical professional), not the receiver (decision maker).
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FINESSE is a fishbone diagram, a mnemonic, and a mental model. FINESSE stands for Frame, Illustrate, Noise Reduction, Empathy, Structure, Synergy, and Ethics. Systems thinking as applied to effective communication is the cornerstone of FINESSE. We’ll briefly explore these aspects in this article.
Acronyms are a subset of mnemonics that use the first letter of each word to create another memorable word. FINESSE is both an acronym and a mnemonic. [Read more…]
Anyone who knows me may also know about my father, Charles Latino, and his lifelong contribution to the field of reliability. My father was one of the pioneers of reliability in the 1950’s when nobody even knew what reliability really was. He pioneered and championed technologies like vibration analysis, infrared thermography and many others working for a Fortune 100 chemical company. Later he focused his attention on the cultural aspects of reliability and how organizations need to behave to make it all work.
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Have you ever heard of a communication system? You likely have, but you’ve probably not considered what that means. The good news for most of us is that communication is indeed a system. Even better, as technical professionals, we are blessed with the reality of what that means. The next time you serve as a trusted advisor, remember that effective communication requires systems thinking.
A system is a collection of interrelated or interacting parts, each of which can affect the behavior or outcomes of the whole. One defining property of a system is that it provides a function that none of the parts can accomplish by themselves. The corollary is that a system is not the sum of the parts but the product of their interactions.
Simple examples include the mechanical advantage gained from a system of pulleys or a gearbox. Sports teams or work units are examples of human systems. Systems are essential aspects of our everyday lives.
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Abstract: With nearly four (4) decades of experience in Reliability, Maintenance and Safety in my rear-view mirror now, I’ve gotten to pondering about what have I actually learned? What has been my purpose? For those who don’t know me you can learn more about my career pathway by visiting my LinkedIn Profile. In short, I’ve been a practitioner, consultant, educator, author, businessman, mentor and thought-influencer (don’t like the term ‘Leader’, sounds too cocky).
Given all this ‘wisdom’ (polite term for dues paid in years or the state of being ‘old-er’), what have I really learned?
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The “Easier to Read’ series on writing tips helps reliability professionals make their reports easier to understand. The series heps technical professionals gain an understanding of how social media has impacted traditional writing. In some cases, the shift is obviously toward shorter, direct styles. In other cases, the shift returns to good practices that we have simply forgotten. Either way, the shift is real and impacts all of our reliability reports and other forms of technical communication.
Most of my inspiration comes from the people and projects we encounter through our consulting practice, JD Solomon Solutions. Such was the case here.
A few months ago, one of the technical professionals on a reliability assessment project commented that I posted a lot of articles on social media. He asked what I got out of it, and I replied that one of the things was improved writing. I suggested he give it a try. The idea for the series came when he asked me to give him some tips on how to get started.
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Readability formulas determine how easily a specific audience can understand a text. There are more than a dozen readability formulas, such as Flesch Reading Ease, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), the Gunning-FOG Index, and the Coleman-Liau Index. Many Google, Microsoft, and Adobe products have a built-in readability formula. Editing tools such as Grammarly do, too. The one big thing to remember is that too much attention to readability scores does not mean your writing is easier to comprehend or understand.
Most readability formulas use some combination of sentence length, the average number of words per sentence, the average number of characters per word, or the number of words with three or more syllables. You can use the formulas to score text by hand. The results from these formulas are often given as a grade level, such as “4th grade” or “12th grade.”
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How much should you pay attention to readability scores generated from tools like the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Formula? As a technical professional, you probably should pay careful attention. But remember, while improving the Flesch-Kincaid score is important for accessibility and readability, balancing this with accurately conveying the technical information is essential.
Readability is a quality of your business writing. People will be able to understand your sentences easily if your text’s readability is high. If the readability is low, people still might understand what you’re saying, but reading your text is likely a draining experience, but people may still understand it.
Big words and complex sentences aren’t bad. Using too many of them demands much more concentration from your reader. Big words and complex sentences are also harder if someone’s first language is not yours or the reader has some form of visual or hearing impairment.
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Headings are vital in improving accessibility for vision-impaired individuals by providing structure, navigation, and context. Headings make content more understandable and usable for those who rely on screen readers and other assistive technologies when used correctly.
It’s essential to follow good practices to create accessible text with headings.
Use proper HTML headings (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) to create a hierarchical structure. Avoid using other formatting (e.g., bold text) as a substitute for headings.
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Most people now flip through reports searching for useful information, stopping to read only if something seems interesting. Blame it on the information age or social media. But if skimming is too daunting, your document is unlikely to achieve its purpose. These are five writing tips to make it easier for readers to skim your business writing.
Use meaningful subheadings that tell a story rather than descriptive labels. Descriptive labels are a product of traditional writing that provides little useful information. Each subsection of your report should have a heading that summarizes its contents. Descriptive subheadings allow readers to understand your basic messages without reading every word. [Read more…]
The way we communicate information has undergone a significant transformation. Traditional writing has given way to a more concise and engaging writing style on social media. This brief article provides six ways that social media has improved my business writing.
I use subheadings selectively in traditional writing. Selectively means maybe one subheading per 3 to 5 paragraphs. Social media teaches us that subheadings serve as signposts, guiding readers to the information they seek, improving readability, and enhancing the overall user experience. I know to use a subheading for every 1 to 2 paragraphs.
I’ve been in the Reliability and RCA space now for 38 years now (yes, I’m old 😊), but recently I’ve had a major change in perspective. For 37 of those years my family owned and ran a business (Reliability Center, Inc) that offered training, consulting, and software in the Root Cause Analysis (RCA) space. We developed and created the PROACT® RCA Methodology & Software which has been adopted by many Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies. However, in 2019, we enacted succession plans as we (my brothers, sisters, and I) approached retirement ages. We sold RCI in 2019.
NOW comes the perspective change, I am not an RCA provider anymore who is beholden to a proprietary brand, but I’m now an RCA consumer with deep domain knowledge of what the core principles of effective RCA are. In this paper, I would like to remove the RCA provider brand labels, and delve into ‘What makes any RCA effort, good versus great?” When we remove the labels and look at any investigative occupation, all the steps are basically the same. So, let’s explore together!
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FINESSE is a cause-and-effect approach for effective communication when there are high levels of complexity and uncertainty. Said another way, FINESSE is an approach used for big, strategic decisions that take months or years to make. FINESSE facilitates the memory of effective communication: Frame, Illustrate, Noise, Empathy, Structure, Synergy, and Ethics.
Major decisions that take months to resolve, require a significant amount of investment, and involve many people (and some calculations) have complexity and uncertainty. These are the situations where trusted advisors need FINESSE. [Read more…]
Using shapes as a deceptive communication practice is an old trick used for manipulation by one side of an argument. The good news is that Fortune gets it right in its annual publication of Fortune 500 companies. Fortune correctly uses two-dimensional shapes (circles) to depict one-dimensional values such as annual revenues. We’ll discuss this data visualization trick in this brief article.
Suppose your total revenues were $100 per month, and your leading competitor had total revenues of $10 per month. Clearly, you are ten times stronger from a total revenue perspective from your competitor. A one-dimensional graph, such as a bar chart, makes an honest visual representation of the difference.
