She assumed Billy’s silence meant the work would be done, and she failed to be responsible to ensure her message had gotten through. She failed to follow the second rule above. This breakdown in communication leads to a breakdown in trust between the partners and the team begins to falter. From Agatha’s point of view, that is exactly what happened.
Billy did not follow the first rule above… he never replied at all! Unfortunately, when a reply is not given, it is just as detrimental to the relationship as agreeing to the request and not following through. Let us apply this code of honor to Agatha and Billy’s case.
When making a request of someone, you must ensure you elicit and obtain one of the four replies from rule 1. When you receive a request, you must, in a timely fashion, accept, decline, counter-offer, or promise to reply at a later time (and keep that promise). A possible code of honor, mentioned at the most recent Chapters workshop and obtained from the work of Werner Erhard et al., works well with volunteer teams working via e-mail, so we will review it here and apply it to Agatha and Billy’s situation. In reality, this conflict can be avoided entirely if both Agatha and Billy (and the entire organization) agreed to a set of rules regarding communication and e-mail etiquette–a code of honor–when they first joined the organization. How many of us have found ourselves in Agatha’s or Billy’s shoes? Is Agatha at fault? Billy? Both? Neither? The truth is… it doesn’t matter at this point, as the organization is already at risk of failing in some way. Unfortunately, this situation is more common than we imagine. In his view, Agatha is at fault for not trying to reach him more than once. He expects that, should anything urgent pop up, someone trying to reach him would e-mail him a few times to make sure he notices the message. He likes to keep his promises, so unless he gives his word that he will complete a project, he will not do the work. She also believes that if there was an objection, she would have heard from Billy about it in a reasonable time frame, say, within 24-48 hours.īilly has different expectations. For her, failing to reply and say no to the report means Billy has quietly acquiesced to doing the work. From Agatha’s point of view, Billy is at fault since he didn’t complete the report. Billy says he never saw the e-mail because he was busy working on another high-priority project he never agreed to do the work. 
Ten days later, Agatha and Billy have an argument because Agatha did not receive the report. Agatha sends Billy an e-mail, making a request that Billy submit to her a report she needs for her upcoming trip in 10 days. Suppose two people, Agatha and Billy, work in the same organization, and team up for the first time.
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