Unclear Goal, Clogged Comms

1993’s video game Doom taught me about organisational communication.

In the late 90s, our IT teacher banned Doom. Whilst it felt overkill at the time, I recently came to understand why.

Suggests David Kushner: “Hours after the Doom was released, Carnegie-Mellon’s computer systems administrator posted a notice asking that all Doom players do not play Doom in network-mode [because it] caused serious degradation of performance for the player’s network [...]. Intel banned the game after it found its system swamped. Texas A&M erased it from its computer servers.”

Why did Doom degrade network performance? In network/multiplayer mode, Doom would broadcast every player movement to every computer on the entire network, even to those computers not running Doom. Not only did this clog networks, it degraded the performance of every networked computer as they needed to sift through myriads of incoming data.

Let’s put it another way. Imagine everyone in an organisation relocating their desks to the central atrium, and being told to shout out blow-by-blow accounts of their actions as they happen. Communications would become clogged: people would spend more time sharing and sifting through updates, and have little time left to concentrate.

Unfortunately, this is the environment that organisations often create unintentionally. We discuss various projects, dependencies, risks and measurements via many means: reports, prioritisation meetings, project updates, townhalls, standups, and scrums of scrums. Our calendars and communication channels become clogged, and we find we’re spending more time discussing and replanning work than making progress.

But, what’s the alternative? Focus.

Later versions of Doom relied less on broadcasting, and became more focused: the game identified the few networked computers running Doom, and communicated with them and only them.

In organisations, we can take a similar approach. When we have an agreed and understood goal, it becomes clear which work we need to do (and that which we needn’t), and which measurements and risks matter (and those which don’t). This means our communications become less clogged: fewer people need to talk about fewer things to make progress on those few things that matter.

The takeaway? As Goldratt suggests, “Productivity is the act of bringing a company closer to its goal.” If we don’t know our goal, we cannot be productive: we’re Doomed (Ba dum tss!) to lose focus in action, measurement, and communication.