The rye that never came: On Tuesdays Kofi does the flour order from home. One Tuesday a message about rye never reaches him.
How the rye went missing
Tuesday, 9 a.m.
At the end of the night shift, Priti writes on the whiteboard at Mill Lane: 'Rye nearly gone. Order 10 bags.'
At home
Kofi is at his kitchen table, three kilometres away. The order goes to Valley Grain without the rye.
Friday
There is no rye bread in any of the three shops.
Nobody was careless. The message was written in one place and the person who needed it was in another.
Doing your work away from the workplace, and keeping in touch by phone, email and video, is remote working (2.1.7). Some days in and some days at home is hybrid working: Marco does the accounts at home on Mondays and Tuesdays and is at Mill Lane the rest of the week.
Working apart is also a matter of hours. The night shift runs from 2 a.m. to 10 a.m. and the shops open at 7. By the afternoon, when the shop managers do their paperwork, Priti is asleep. They work in the same town, but for most of the day they might as well be in different countries.
The quick word
- In one building you ask across the room and have the answer in ten seconds
- Working apart, a question has to be written, sent, and then waited on
- Small questions stop being asked at all
The face and the voice
- Tone, a smile or a frown show how a message was meant (non-verbal communication)
- A short text message carries none of that
- The reader fills the gap, often with the worst meaning
What you overhear
- Walking past the whiteboard, you see the rye is low without being told
- At home you know only what someone chooses to send you
- The chat by the ovens and the gossip, the grapevine, never reach the kitchen table
In 2.6.1 you met the two kinds of route a message can take: the official ones the business sets up (formal communication), such as a meeting or a written order, and the unplanned ones (informal communication), such as a chat or the grapevine.
Working apart hits the informal side hardest, because nobody bumps into anyone. Whatever the informal chat used to carry now has to travel by a formal route, or it does not travel at all. Priti's whiteboard note was informal, and it had no route to Kofi.
It is not all loss: Working apart gives communication some things too. The gains are real when the business chooses its methods on purpose.
What working apart gives
- A record. A written message leaves a record anyone can check later.
- Any time. A shared online order sheet can be read at 3 a.m. by Priti and at 3 p.m. by Kofi.
- No travel. A video call brings Marco into Monday's meeting without the drive to Mill Lane.
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After the week without rye, Lena sits down with Marco, the three shop managers and Priti.
The question is not whether people should work apart; the bakery needs a night shift, and the managers value their day at home. The question is how each kind of message should travel.
Match the method to the message: Choosing a method for a situation (2.6.1) comes down to four questions. How urgent is it? Does it need a reply, and perhaps a back-and-forth? Does it need a record? Is it personal?
When people work in one building, a wrong choice is rescued by a quick word. When they work apart, nothing rescues it, so the choice matters more.
| The message at Lena's | The method | Why this one |
|---|---|---|
| The big oven stops at 3 a.m.; the vans leave at 5 | A phone call to Lena | Urgent, and Lena may need to ask questions and decide now. A message could sit unread until morning. |
| The rye is running low | A shared online order sheet Priti fills in at the end of each shift | Whoever does the order, on whatever day, reads the same sheet, and it keeps a record. |
| Each shop's weekly sales and costs for Marco | An email with the figures attached | Numbers need to be written down, checked and kept, and Marco can read them at home. |
| Tom's shifts are going to change | Face to face at the end of his shift, or a video call | Personal news needs a voice and a face, and a chance for Tom to ask questions. Never a text. |
| Monday's planning for the week | A 20-minute video meeting at 9:30 | The one half-hour when the night shift is still at work and the managers have started, and Marco joins from home. |
The trap: text for everything: Teams that work apart slide into sending every message the same way, usually by text, because it is quick for the sender.
Then the urgent message waits unread, the personal one lands badly, and the important figure is lost in a long chat. Quick to send is not the same as quick to understand.
The rules Lena's Bakery agrees
- Urgent means a call. If it cannot wait until the next shift, phone.
- Anything anyone else must act on goes on the shared sheet, never on a whiteboard in one building.
- Figures go by email, so there is a record Marco and Lena can both check.
- Personal news is face to face or by video, never by text.
- One short video meeting a week at 9:30, when the night shift and the day are both at work.
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Two words at 7:05: At 7:05 on a Saturday, Aisha sends a message to the staff group: 'Rolls late again.' The van had reached High Street twenty minutes late.
Priti reads it at 10:15, after a night spent fixing a broken mixer. She reads it as blame and answers sharply. By lunchtime two people are upset about a message that took four seconds to type.
Every barrier from 2.6.2 is still there when people work apart. What changes is that some of them grow, and the easiest cure, walking over and asking what someone meant, is gone. Five matter most.
The barriers working apart makes bigger
No tone, no face
A written message has no voice or expression, so it is easily read the wrong way. Aisha meant 'the van was late'; Priti heard 'your bakers are slow'. The cure: say what happened and what you need, and pick up the phone for anything that could sting.
The time gap
Priti's shift ends at 10 and the managers' paperwork happens in the afternoon, so a question can wait hours for an answer. Across countries the same gap is a difference in time zones. The cure: a fixed overlap, like the 9:30 meeting, and messages that can be acted on without a reply.
Technology that fails or is not shared
The phone signal is weak inside the Mill Lane bakehouse, and Ade does not use the group app. A message sent is not a message received. The cure: one tool that everyone has and can use, and a second route for anyone who does not.
Too many messages
Twenty-two people in one group chat send sixty messages a day. The oven fault sits between photos of a birthday cake, and nobody sees it (information overload). The cure: separate groups, and urgent things by phone.
Fewer chats, weaker ties
Marco hears none of the talk at Mill Lane on his days at home. People who rarely meet trust each other less, so they read each other's messages in the worst light. The cure: planned time together, such as a monthly breakfast at Mill Lane when the shift ends.
When the gap is countries apart: Lena's staff are a few kilometres apart. A business with staff or suppliers in several countries meets the same barriers, only bigger.
What gets bigger
- The time gap becomes a time-zone gap. When one side starts work, the other has gone home, so a simple question can take a day.
- Missing tone costs more. People who do not share a first language lose even more when the tone of a short written message is missing.
Notice that none of these barriers is new. Misreading, delay, failed equipment and too much information all happen in one building too. Working apart makes each one bigger, and removes the quick conversation that used to put it right.
Two moves that cover most of it: Choose the method for the message: urgent by phone, records by email or a shared sheet, personal news face to face or by video.
Then put back on purpose what the building used to give for free: a fixed time when everyone is at work, and time to talk that is not about the job.
How this comes up: This micro comes up in short questions tied to a case.
The usual questions
- Explain two barriers to communication in a named business, for four marks, or six in a longer version.
- Explain one disadvantage of a method, such as verbal communication, for two.
When people work apart: When the case has people working apart, in different towns, on different shifts or in different countries, use this micro's barriers: tone lost in writing, the time gap, technology, too many messages, weaker ties.
The four-mark pattern
- Explain the first barrier. The time gap: people who work at different hours cannot easily reach each other.
- Show it in the case. Priti's shift ends at 10 and the managers order in the afternoon, so her note on the rye waited on a whiteboard and the order went without it.
- Explain the second barrier. Written messages carry no tone or expression, so they are easily misread.
- Show it in the case. Aisha's 'Rolls late again' was read by Priti as blame, and the reply made things worse.
Two traps: 'Poor communication' is not a barrier; it is what the barriers cause. Name the thing that gets in the way: the time gap, the missing tone, the weak signal.
And a barrier with nothing from the case stops at one mark. If the sentence could be about any business, it is not yet an explanation of this one.
Explain two barriers to communication at Lena's Bakery Ltd that come from its staff working apart.
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