Does your Dog Bite?

Does your dog bite?

I happened to see the attached clip recently. In my opinion it is one of the greatest moments in comedy film history.

As with any great comedy, its brilliance comes from its simplicity. That said, when you analyse it, you can see that how even a simple scene requires several different bits to come together to deliver comedy gold; most of all I think the immaculate delivery of the final payoff line from Graham Stark (who incidentally appeared in most of the Pink Panther films playing different characters).

This wonderful scene gives us an important reminder about the danger that assumptions play in how we communicate.

Key to our success as communicators is to help people understand. That means providing sufficient clarity to help people see what an issue means in their local situation without leaving too much space where people have questions unanswered so guess or assume.

Just because something might be obvious to you doesn’t mean it will be understood as well by someone else. This is even more the case if members of your audiences are doing totally different roles, maybe working in different countries or reading something in a language they don’t fully speak. If the message is important then it is our responsibility to make sure meaning and the resultant actions required are very clear.

There are lots of ways you can do this. Concentrating on using simple words, short sentences and/or bullet points in your writing, using online tools to measure readability or asking colleagues (especially from other countries) to read something in advance to help confirm that it can easily be understood are some ways. There are others.

Words matter but even when you get them broadly right, Inspector Clouseau reminds us they may still not be understood if you’re not really clear.

You can see the clip here