Communication is really important and really hard

Often putting information available or sending an email is the thing people think to be enough communication in organizations. For me, communication is never about making information available, but about getting people to understand the message. Too often communication is seen to be broadcasting information to all and not caring if anyone is receiving the message or not. I see this as both inefficient and unnecessary communication.

People receive messages differently so there needs to be many different ways the message can be received. This is the part that it is so easy to underestimate. It is easy to get communication out of the way by publishing information to be available. I've never seen this to really work. Only the cases where ones work continuation is in question, as larger layoffs, publishing information might be enough. For any other communication, there are always too many distractions to lose the message to all the other noise.

It's not only about the noise, that prevents communication going through. People also receive the messages differently. Some people need to see the big picture in order to understand the message, others need to get the details for understanding. For some people it is important to know the reasoning behind something, for others goal might be the most important thing. This needs to be kept in mind when communication is planned.

Communication is one of the hardest topics in organizations. The value of the communication is hard to measure, but fails in communication are easy to point out. Often improving efficiency in communication, could increase many things in the organization. Better communication would need to be done so that it won't take much time out from people other tasks and still makes sure people receive the message.

The rule, using more time in the planning, will save time at the end, suits communication really well. The better person or small team plans communication and uses time to prepare it, the more time will be saved from everybody else. The bigger the organization, the larger the savings.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen