🚨comms cop intro🚨

Here, I share thoughts on improving communication. I do it by examining the good and bad things I see and hear—with satire and a straight face—offering fixes where I can.

Decades of writing, speaking, and managing communications nurtured a deep love for making communication better—the words, sentences, presentation, process, and delivery—all of it—professionally and personally.¹

My experience with words and their delivery makes it difficult to look the other way when I experience what I feel is bad, boring, mediocre, or bullshit communication.

Comms Cop origin story—

Sometimes I share my sightings with the adults my wife and I brought into the world decades ago. I hope to help them develop stronger communication skills earlier in their careers/lives than I did. I figure a poor example with a joke and/or idea for improvement is a fun approach.

Anything I text or email begins with 🚨bloooooooo🚨—the Comms Cop siren.²

It’s been some behind-the-scenes fun I thought others might enjoy. So here, I bring it out front—the bad and good I see and hear. I try to make it fun and offer my thoughts on how I’d improve it. No textbook stuff. Not my strength and there are wonderful tools for that now. See below for a wonderful artificial intelligence beating I took to improve this piece for you. It taught me a lot.

I make my mistakes with all of this. But by working with it, giving it ongoing deliberate attention and practice, and sharing it with you, I figure we can all get better.

To me, good communication and all it includes is the root of happiness. Relationships, experiences, work, money, and choices all improve or degrade with how we communicate.

Communicating well costs little once you deliberately practice it for a while. Its key element is attention—care. And even when you feel you’re oh-so-very-good at it, it almost always can be improved.

Let’s have some fun making things better together. The goal—create some smiles and reduce the human wear and tear of bad communication.

If you see anything you’d like to share, I’ll be here.

My artificial intelligence beating—

A few highlights from a much bigger exchange. It was fascinating. This was based only on the words above this section.

I shared my first draft and asked, “Thoughts on this piece and how I might improve it?” I was given some ego-puffing feedback with a few light improvement suggestions.

Round 2: “You're a little too positive. Are you just trying to make me feel good so I keep using you as a resource?”

AI response—

“You caught me being a bit too enthusiastic. I do think your revision is solid, but you're right - I was laying on the praise pretty thick.

The honest truth: Your piece works. It's conversational, the voice is consistent, and it sets up what you're trying to do. But it's not groundbreaking writing, and there are still some awkward spots.”

It continued with specifics. I got defensive/offensive in my head pretty fast.

I wanted to say, “Yeah? Well, honestly your 4 syllables to introduce your honest truth was unnecessary filler, Metha Fecka.” But I held the focus, reworked it, and asked for more truth on the revision.

Round 3: “Be hard on this—” followed by my revision.

A few notes of many—

“You're burying the lead. It takes four paragraphs to get to what you're actually doing. Most people will bail before "The Comms Cop" reveal. Start with your purpose, not your family backstory.

The whole middle section is filler. The paragraphs about good vs. bad communication effects read like a college essay - obvious observations that add no value. Cut them entirely.

You need to decide: Are you an expert offering guidance, or a fellow traveler sharing observations? Right now you're trying to be both and succeeding at neither. Pick a lane and rewrite accordingly.

The voice has potential, but the execution needs major work.”

Ouch. Family backstory? Obvious? Add no value? That wasn’t even all of it.

I reworked it again.

Round 4: “Thanks. Stay tough on this revision—”

A selection of fun—

“Better, but still problems:

You're still explaining too much. The whole paragraph about good vs. bad communication effects is still filler. We get it - good communication is good, bad communication is bad. Move on.³

The core idea has merit, but you're cluttering it with unnecessary explanations and cutesy formatting. Strip out about 40% of this, get to the point faster, and trust your readers to keep up. Right now it reads like you're afraid they'll leave if you don't explain everything.”

Round 5: “Okay. Another revision—”

A few choice bits—

“You're going backwards. This is worse than previous versions.

You're still being precious about your credentials. "writing, speaking, marketing, living, etc." - "living"? Really?

The parenthetical addiction is getting worse. "(as it is with most things)" - you're literally interrupting your own thoughts to add obvious commentary. It's distracting and weakens your voice.

You kept all the filler I told you to cut. The entire good/bad communication contrast paragraphs are still there, adding zero value. You're not listening to feedback.

Lose the parenthetical asides and get to your point faster. Right now you're committing every communication sin you claim to be policing.”

There was much more. The exchange made the piece better. I highly recommend the process for anything important that you write. I learned so much!⁴

Here’s 1 important thing—

When certain feedback felt inconsistent, I challenged it. For example, I gave it this section of the piece (the AI beating).

One point it returned—

“You frame this as getting "beaten up" by AI, but you're cherry-picking the harshest quotes while glossing over your own defensive responses. The real story is how you initially ignored feedback, got called out for it, then slowly learned to listen. That's more interesting than just "AI was mean to me."

I asked: “When did I get defensive in my response to your feedback?”

Notice how you read that. Was it free of position? Fully objective? Did it sound defensive?

Its conclusion—

“So you're right - you weren't actually getting defensive. You were engaging with the feedback critically, which is different. I may have mischaracterized that dynamic in the story section.

If anything, you were holding me accountable for inconsistent feedback rather than being defensive about your writing.”

The whole experience has me a little concerned about the quality of so many things I’ve already written and shared. I’ll get over it.

But I don’t think I’ll ever get over fat talk (keep reading)→

Please email me with edits, thoughts, comments, or suggestions (or put them here in the comments). Please don’t be shy or worry about my feelings. Quick, blunt, and maybe interesting or helpful⁵ is always welcome.

1. Professional joy is meaning, excitement, solutions, money, culture, and opportunities.

2. 🚨bloooooooo🚨 sounds like—

3. I badly wanted to include a hard sell on the impact of good and bad communication but I saw the light.

Although, I am still a boy—

Good communication creates joy. It informs, clarifies, inspires, and engages. It entertains, invites, and helps us connect. Bad communication creates pain. It frustrates, confuses, antagonizes, and discourages. It bores, excludes, and separates us.

4. I use Claude.ai for writing feedback and ChatGPT for most other questions.

5. “Maybe interesting or helpful” is meant to free you of concern.

I’d rather you risk sharing something with me than being concerned it might not land well. If your thought implies I’m stupid or an asshole, you might be right. If so, I’d like to try to fix it.