Disagreements in communication are not as simple as they seem

For entrepreneurs, in addition to making a good product and building a profitable business model, collaboration with the outside world is also a very important part of success. We've seen too many cases where miscommunication or high collaboration costs have resulted in huge losses. All of this could have been avoided, perhaps because one or two points were not done properly, leading to the overall passivity.

Shannon, the founder of modern information theory, put forward a theory to the effect that the quality of information dissemination depends on the size of the bandwidth, and only if the bandwidth is large enough, the information dissemination can be smooth enough, and the transmission capacity can be larger. In the early broadcasting system, engineers found that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't change the noise problem in the signal transmission process. At first, they thought that the frequency was not adjusted properly, but then through countless attempts, they found that, no matter how to debug the frequency, the chances of noise were still very high. Until Shannon proposed the information principle, this problem can be fundamentally solved.

As long as the bandwidth is large enough, the noise will be small enough, and the loss in the information transmission process will be low enough that the entire communication process will be more efficient.

In today's view, this is a basic common sense, but if there is no such genius as Shannon theoretically proposed, people still have to grope in practice for a long time, and do not necessarily find a way out.

Fu Sheng also said some time ago, the essential difference between people is cognitive differences, many conflicts and misunderstandings, not caused by the facts or logical disputes, and not even caused by emotions, fundamentally, is caused by cognitive differences.

For example, now the popular online several controversial topics, once the discussion may be cut off from the kind of friendship, the brunt of Chinese medicine, on the one hand, there are many people standing in the traditional cultural perspective, Chinese medicine is full of praise, that is the treasure of Chinese civilization, is the pride of every Chinese; on the other hand, there are still many people scoffed at the Chinese medicine, that is, compared with the modern Western medicine is the charlatan, is a fraudulent trick. On the other hand, there are many people who scoff at TCM and consider it a charlatan's trick compared to modern Western medicine. The two factions are in a heated debate, and no one can convince anyone.

Returning to the debate itself, it is not difficult to realize that what really makes the two groups of people argue is not the facts themselves, that is, the most critical point of conflict is not about whose efficacy is better, but rather about the differences in the two sides' perceptions. If we were just talking about the facts, it would be very simple, we would just need to get some statistics on the efficacy of Chinese and Western medicine in treating the same disease, but the difficulty lies in the fact that both sides want to try to persuade each other of the fundamental factors behind the difference between Chinese and Western medicine, namely, modern science.

Modern science, after years of development, has long been a systematic cognitive structure, and there is a certain threshold, not everyone can come up to insert a few words. To make a simple analogy, if you use modern medicine to explain the "fire" thing, you need a bunch of professional terms, and the medical knowledge behind, but in Chinese medicine here is not a problem at all, "fire" concept is simple and easy to understand and y rooted in people's hearts and minds, and treatment program The concept of "fire" is simple and easy to understand, and the treatment program is very actionable, since "fire" can be solved by "removing fire".

It is the divergence between simple linear thinking and modern logical thinking that is at the root of this controversy, and this divergence is caused by the difference in perception.

In our daily lives, we are used to understanding disagreements too superficially, even from the perspective of conspiracy theories, and once there is a cognitive bias, it is difficult to bridge the gap at the root. Too many entrepreneurs die in communication. It may sound exaggerated, but the reality is so cruel.

We often know from various sources, Steve Jobs is a very bad-tempered person, treating his subordinates with extreme impatience, even a little bit of flaws are absolutely intolerable. So, where is the root of this bad temper? Simply because Jobs' emotional management problems?

Obviously not, the root cause of this bad temper lies in Jobs' perception of the product and other people have a huge difference, you see the world and the world he sees is not a world, must spend a lot of energy and effort to barely keep up with his perception of the product, those defects seem very insignificant, but this small error for Jobs, is fatal.

In the days when Steve Jobs was a member of the team, it was a very important part of his life.

In the field of astronomy, many breakthroughs and new discoveries come from very small errors between observations and theories, and in the eyes of ordinary people, these errors are negligible, and are usually the difference between a few zeroes after the decimal point, but in the eyes of the scientists, it is this level of error is not to be ignored, and on the contrary, they have invested a great deal of effort in research and observation to ensure that the theory is rigorous enough.

It's a good thing that I've been working on this for a long time.

I have seen some entrepreneurs, in the internal communication will appear in the cognitive huge differences, so in a seemingly small point on the argument, if we can jump out to see, we will find that these very small points are not isolated, but the cognitive system of a cross-section, it is because of the overall cognitive differences in the details of the projection, caused by the disagreement and argument.

The solution is to balance cognition as much as possible, and only by working on this can we get to the root of the problem; otherwise, more meetings are just a waste of time. This is not new, we can often see many companies meet day and night, the General Assembly small meeting constantly, but the key is, through so close meetings, the problem still can not be solved, or that the previous problem has not been solved, and there are new problems, which are worth thinking about again and again.

A lot of couples often quarrel with each other, it seems to be some trivial matters between the two couples, but from the depths, in fact, it is the cognitive differences caused by the differences, and this difference is fundamental, and need deep communication to realize the existence of differences, but also only through a deep communication and thinking, to avoid these unnecessary quarrels.

So, whether you are an entrepreneur or not, the importance of the ability to communicate and collaborate is self-evident, we must think from the cognitive level, and never get stuck in the details difficult to extricate themselves.