Had a look and I’m in two minds about this. I agree that there is a lot of room for misunderstandings in this form of communication. But the use of codes (while based on a solid concept) feels a little too ordered to me. It takes the nuances out of communicating and turns it into a completely objective, fact-based exercise.

It begins to eliminate the kind of chaos that results in energetic impassioned communicating.

People used to be (and still are) judged on their appearance first and their speech and mannerisms second. We never had to resort to pasting codes on our foreheads as a warning ‘I had a fight with my boyfriend last night so if I’m a little short and abrupt this morning at work it’s not personal’.

Part of uncovering facets of people and building relationships is the chaos that surrounds it.

Although I can see the place for these codes, I don’t think they should become an excuse for people to become so PC that they become lazy in communicating and start relying on these codes to do it for them.

And also, with the codes being number based, with all by back and forth referring, my reading time has just doubled!

I really like the idea. Would be interesting to see how quickly we could absorb it here and carry it over to the world beyond TmTd.

The advent of telephones must have an introduced a serious learning curve to people who had only ever communicated face to face or via the postal service. Surely they would have had to learn ‘telephone etiquette’? I’m sure that the early pioneers would automatically have checked their hair in the mirror and smoothed the front of their dress when the phone rang – a throwback to what they would automatically have done when the doorbell rang.

So with each new communication vehicle, there are new challenges and pitfalls. And it’s up to the pioneers to negotiate their way through this.

In 5 years time we will be facing another new communication vehicle and will have to find our way through that as well. And in hindsight we might find that what concerns us now is maybe not an issue then?

This thinking from de Bono to try to increase the “bandwidth” of the communication channel by linking a code to a more complex description of emotion, thus makes sense on one level. On another level it now becomes very dangerous if you use the wrong codes…or if the coding system is not exactly understood by everyone in the same way.

Still I think it would be fun to experiment with this – especially in a context like ours where we already have strong relationships. I agree with Roger that pictures communicate a broader message than words. And I still think that, if the message you want to communicate is part of conflict-communication between you and the receiver, to rather pick up the phone or make a pot of coffee – especially if a long-term relationship is what you want with this person.