DALE'S LAW:
IF YOU DON’T SAY WHAT YOU WANT,
YOU PROBABLY WON’T GET IT.

 
        This statement sounds obvious enough, but the corollaries branch out into most
        areas of communication.  There are two halves to the law.  The first part deals with
        communicating your desires or the requirements of your organization to others.

• The second half talks about receiving the results of those stated requirements.
  The corollaries spread out from each half of the statement.  See if any of them
  sound familiar.

  1.  If you can’t state clearly what you want, the results will be partial or approximate.
       A fuzzy specification requires extra hours of interpretation and usually results in
       unnecessary rework.

  2.  If you haven’t figured out exactly what you want, you may not recognize the result
       as being what you needed.  This is the flip side of corollary #1:   You, as the
       contractor, may understand the objectives of the project better than your clients do.
       Now that you’ve delivered, you cannot convince them that the work has been
       accomplished to specification.

  3.  If you state exactly what you want in writing, and your subordinate cannot read,
       then you will get results which conform to the current folklore on the factory floor.
       Manufacturing instructions and quality control procedures are particularly vulnerable
       to this one.

  4.  If you state your needs clearly to the wrong person, the right person will not act to
       get you what you need.  Not understanding the organizational structure can render
       the best instructions useless.

  5.  If you are too busy to explain exactly what you want, you depend on your subordinates’
       telepathic powers for successful execution of your instructions.

  6.  Verbal communication does not work at several removes.  If you speak with the first
       shift supervisor and tell her what needs to be done overnight, you cannot realistically
       expect to see your desired results next morning when third shift is streaming out the
       door into the sunshine.

  7.  If you express the company’s short-term objectives in the form of a culture change,
       the changed behavior will persist long after its usefulness has passed.

  8.  You’re ready to write this one and probably another ten. January 8, 1999