Communication.
Protocols, load and clarity in environments where a misread costs something.
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In high-stakes environments, communication is a safety system. Aviation and surgery learned that the hard way and built protocols; sport and business mostly still rely on volume.
What this field actually measures
- Closed-loop communication
Message sent, read back, confirmed.
ReferenceStandard in aviation and operating theatres; associated with reduced error rates in team performance research.
- Information load
How much a receiver can act on at once.
ReferenceWorking-memory limits are small — the classic estimate is around four chunks for active manipulation.
- Shared mental model
Overlap in how teammates understand the task.
ReferenceMeasured by concept-mapping agreement; correlates with coordination quality.
Evidence & metrics
The published work behind the numbers above, and the public datasets you can open to check us. If a claim can’t be traced here, we don’t print it.
Citations
Silent Messages / the misread 7-38-55 figures
Mehrabian · 1971
The often-quoted 7% verbal figure applies only to judging feelings from inconsistent single words — not to communication generally.
Closing the loop: readback and communication error in high-risk work
Patient-safety and aviation human-factors literature — Joint Commission / NASA ASRS analyses · 2004–present
Structured readback and standardised handoff reduce miscommunication-driven errors in high-consequence settings.
Datasets
NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System
NASA / FAA · free
Searchable incident reports, many coded to communication breakdown.
Joint Commission sentinel event data
The Joint Commission · free
Root-cause categories for serious adverse events, including communication failure.
Still open
- Which sideline and huddle protocols reduce error under fatigue?
- How much does language load degrade late-game execution?
- Can communication quality be measured without disrupting it?
What we won’t say
We will not equate more talking with better communication. Beyond a point they are inversely related.
- VO-1Evidence before wit
- VO-2Punch at claims, never at people
- VO-3Say the uncertainty out loud
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