Interrupting

Now that we’re all used to Zoom, the question arises as to the courtesy of how to talk on a media which has an inherent lag time. The most common expectation is that you wait for the other person to finish speaking, then wait for the lag, then take your turn.

But I was raised in a part of the world where those expectations were not the norm for in-person conversations, and that half second of silence of lag time doesn’t fit into my sub-culture’s pattern of speech.

This isn’t just me. I found a blog post by Sam Bleckley that called this The Church of Interruption. In the post, Sam explains the two main cultures of 1-on-1 speech, one where it is rude to interrupt, and another where it is rude to stay silent.

This seems to be less of a problem online, where the other speaker can’t tell if you are actually interrupting or whether their connection broke, and you are instead just filling in the gap. But in any case, I try and solve this cultural mismatch between those expecting to speak until they are finished and those expecting me to reply as soon as I can move the conversation forward by apologizing for the interruptions, but I’m from New York.

I do hope that is sufficient for those who think me rude, but this is just one of hundreds of expectations that differ when trying to communicate between cultures

As my work has me emailing, Whatsapping, and speaking with someone from a different culture on a daily basis, its important for all of us to remember that there are many ways to communicate. None are best. All share the common desire to share information.

You have a decision to make. If you have seconds to decide, you go with your gut. If you have minutes, you might take that minute to weigh Plan A with Plan B. If you have weeks you might create a pro-con list to help decide between those two – or even three – options. If you have months, you might take the time to brainstorm for some out-of-the-box options. What most people overlook is that there...

A few months ago I was interviewed on a podcast where the key question was “What is your superpower?” Sounds innocuous and simple, but it was one of those moments to reflect on life and not just provide a truthful answer, but something interesting and thought provoking. My answer was “If only”. What if _____? I’ve been an entrepreneur for over thirty years, founding or co-founding 10 companies. I...

I’m in a reprise mood this season… recently thinking about a blog post from 2015 with a lesson learned in an old movie on how to blow up a dam. A lesson about the expectations when making a big change to the world. The lesson comes from Force 10 from Navarone, starring Harrison Ford and Robert Shaw. This is a movie I first saw on a Sunday afternoon on TV as a pre-teen, and then dozen...

There are so many lessons in startups, startup investing, and technology adoption that come from looking back a few decades. For example, I’m out of the 1970s nostalgic computing rabbit hole, but that journey has subsequently led to reviewing the technological progress of the late 1900s and early 2000s. This week, that was the rise of the RISC-based CPU, which was then obviously going to...

The buzzword of 2024 is “AI” and like social, mobile, cloud, fintech, and blockchain, every startup is claiming to have it and every big startup fundraising is claiming to expand what can be done with it. Or in short, we’ve been here before. A Grand Unified Theory of the AI Hype Cycle does a very good job explaining how this will play out in 13 steps, and how it already played...