Im LOSING YOU
Noise in the Signal
By Matt Mikalatos
When you’ re talking on a cell phone and you start to lose bars, noise is introduced to the signal. Your friend on the other end is still talking, but you’ re only catching bits and pieces. Although their message hasn’ t changed, and they’ re still doing the work of communication, you’ re not able to understand because the noise drowns out the signal.
Anyone who has been on a conference call has experienced the comedy of errors that occurs with noise in the signal. Someone hasn’ t muted their call; they’ re sitting by their gate at the airport, and we keep hearing announcements not to leave our bags unattended. Someone else’ s call keeps dropping. Another is driving in their convertible, and every time they unmute, all we hear is the wind and a distant murmuring. Meanwhile,
44 • Solutions your doorbell rings and you’ re getting urgent text messages.
We’ re all desperately trying to understand each other, but no one can hear anyone else, because there’ s too much noise.
It’ s easy to introduce noise into the signal when we’ re talking to someone else. And when we’ re communicating something as important as the good news, we need to be aware of what we’ re doing that might pre-vent someone from hearing it.
For instance, I knew a man who never tipped his servers at restaurants. He would, instead, leave religious tracts along with the exact change for his meal.“ I gave them the good news of eternal life,” he would say.“ What could be a better tip than that?”