Last weekend, I read a brilliant article in the FT Weekend about a call centre which receives emergency calls from people trapped in lifts—the people who answer when you press the ‘alarm’ button.

It was written by Aidan Tulloch, who I’ve never come across before, but who is clearly a remarkably talented writer of lyrical and absorbing journalism. It’s a truly absorbing piece that’s worth reading for the quality of the writing alone.

I haven’t been able to get the article out of my head since I read it, and during a conversation with a colleague about something entirely different, I suddenly realised why.

In England, as in most countries around the world, doctors must notify health authorities if they suspect someone of one of the diseases set out in legislation. This allows other doctors—like me—to take action to protect the wider population from whatever threat that disease might pose.

From a process mapping perspective, this is straightforward: one doctor has information that another doctor needs. There are myriad routes to streamline or automate the communication of that message. A lot of the time, that would be enormously beneficial.

But my colleague and I were reflecting on how much more there is, sometimes, to those conversations than a simple passing over of information. There can be relationship building (‘how are you these days?’); education and clarification (‘that really doesn’t sound typical of disease X, are you sure that’s a likely diagnosis?’); reinforcement of the value of the notification (‘what do you do with these anyway?’); sharing of situational awareness (‘we’ve seen a lot of these lately’).

It might be massively more efficient for Stannah—the lift company in the FT Weekend article—to make buttons in lifts that just send an automated notification of a fault. But they’ve clearly understood that there’s much more to the interaction than that core notification.

The surrounding chat can be as important, and sometimes more important, than the actual message to be imparted.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.