I was once told that there is no more difficult position to be in than to be like a "one eyed man in the land of the blind".

When you encounter a particular situation and from previous often hard earned experience or knowledge you know exactly what course of action to take - but everybody else is in a completely different place and cannot even begin to appreciate what you are saying. In fact because you cannot be understood at all they will be resent your opinion.

It is like persuading a member of the flat earth society that the world is round. Prejudice and preconceived blinkered thinking kicks in and it is hard to see how to take things forward.

There is little point in this situation in pushing on regardless. You need to take the others along with you until they can at least see however dimly what is needed.

This requires to say the least a degree of tact and diplomacy to give everybody your vision!

I receive a regular consultancy email  which has some good tips in it about effective communication.

This week it suggested that on occasion instead of emailing or texting or instant messaging it might be worth phoning or even more revolutionary going and visiting somebody at their desk.

We are a privileged generation in terms of communication with our many devices and methods and our dismissal of older more traditional means as "snail mail". But speed of communication and choice come with a price. We don't always think what might be the best way to get a message across.

For some things email is great. For others IM works. But it can be really important on occasion to actually see somebody face to face across a table. We are after all human beings seeking to interact with each other whether for business or personal reasons. All this technology is great but we should not be slaves to it rather it should be our servant to enable better communication.