Executive
Summary
Why do we find simple communication
practices so difficult?
Most managers know that change efforts frequently fail at the
implementation stage because of poor communication, but find it
difficult to understand how something that seems so simple can be
so problematic. Here, eight observations of human nature are
linked to communication barriers to show where the issues lie and
what we can do about it.
If your role involves linking up groups of people then it’s likely you’re
familiar with some basic organizational communication practices. A
communication exercise typically involves designing a plan, constructing
clear messages, synchronizing those messages across various media
channels, steering those involved in the information flow process,
engaging, listening and measuring. It’s quite easy to understand how
communication works in theory.
Why are these practices difficult?
Fundamentally,
communication is difficult
because it deals with the softest side of
business: people. We humans are incredibly
complicated, both as senders and receivers of
messages because we are made up of so many
variables and limitations. These aren’t ‘faults’
they’re just aspects to our nature and eight of
them are set out in this article.
Point one is that because something sounds
simple, we think it is easy to put into practice.
This is particularly common when there is a big
body of work comprising a number of tasks
because the more visible and daunting tasks can
easily overshadow the simpler-sounding tasks on
the list, like communicate. For example:
Poor communication practice is telling people to
do something through emails, websites and
Good communicators see the complexities and
understand it takes time and effort to achieve
lasting change even though most communication
concepts are just plain common sense. And
therein lays our second anomaly. As humans, we
naturally want to extend our influence, discover
and conquer; gain control, build and flourish.
This brings us to point two: we are creative power
houses.
Much of communication involves
rigorous discipline: the very antithesis of
creativity. Message sharing is not a powerful job
either. Sure, there is a certain amount of power
in how you communicate, but it’s rare a
communicator determines the ‘what’ of the
message.
Under these circumstances, it’s
difficult to find people who have the drive,
patience and expertise to communicate well.
More importantly, it’s difficult to find managers
who are prepared to support communication
efforts with the necessary understanding and
resources.
However, even the best
communication efforts can easily fall on deaf
ears. The next few points concern those who
receive messages.
Executive Summary | Management & Leadership
Since we’ve taken 24 months to build an online IT
Security learning tool, I’ll just tell our Department
Heads that all employees need to sign up and
complete it by Christmas. (Typically, this triggers
something like a newsletter article and note from
the Department Manager for all staff to action.
But what percentage of staff do you think will go
ahead and proactively sign up for an online
training session amongst competing pressures to
complete year-end tasks and performance
appraisals? Is this percentage good enough?)
newsletters without explaining why its important,
what the consequences will be if the action
doesn’t happen, without taking the time to ask
what people think or finding out what questions
they might have. The fool’s gold here is that it is
far quicker and cheaper to tick the communicate
box by ‘telling’ through electronic media than it is
to organize face-to-face sessions.
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Executive
Summary
Point three: We can’t really understand the
meaning of something we’ve never experienced
for ourselves. Imagine receiving some kind of
internal communication emphasizing the
importance of cross-discipline integration and
teamwork because the company needs to
become more ‘seamless’. You’d have to be pretty
special to appreciate what ‘being a part of
something seamless’ might look like beyond your
immediate colleague base of say, 20 people. A
change like ‘cross-discipline integration’ needs to
be fully explained and exemplified because it’s
difficult for people to be able to concepts they’ve
never experienced.
“On a day to day basis, the
strategic message will always
compete for our attention with
the more immediate details that
keep our lives functioning.”
Four: We choose to limit our view of the world to
protect ourselves from overload and confusion.
People only tend to open their minds up to new
ideas and ways of thinking once they’ve made
the decision to do so. In a business context, this
means that if an employee believes that Health
and Safety is bureaucratic nonsense then any
attempts to persuade him or her to comply with
new H&S policies won’t get very far. If you want
to share anything deeper than simple
information, like “the office will be closed on
Wednesday”, then you can’t avoid linking to your
audience’s pre-existing beliefs, attitudes and
values.
Six: because we don’t realize what we don’t
know, it’s easy to believe our perception is
reality. Of course researchers and strategists
make it their business to discover the unknowns
as part of their job, but generally people don’t
spend time finding out what they don’t know. So
Seven: we humans have an amazingly flexible
sense of proportion. If you lost all your money
then $5,000 would turn from a ‘nice cushion’ into
‘a lot of money’ practically overnight. What this
means is that our sense of priority is much more
fluid than we’d like to think. For medium term
and long term change efforts, this is not good
news because the attention and support we need
from others to deliver isn’t very stable.
The final point is that we brainwash ourselves by
telling ourselves what we want to believe. “I
haven’t got time to stop and donate money to
charity.” Does that kind of logic sound familiar?
This point is about the fact that feelings are often
more important to us than facts. We find reasons
to justify our emotions, to make ourselves feel
better. Further on that point is the observation
that we often reinforce each other’s false realities
in a form of bonding. For example, when
someone comforts a friend by telling them their
partner doesn’t deserve them (when they haven’t
actually heard the other side of yesterday’s
argument) there is a credible purpose for doing
so. But in a commercial setting, when people put
their motives before the truth, the consequences
can be very damaging.
Summary: so what does this leave us with?
We’ve got some people with meaning they need
to share but who may not know how best to share
it even if they had the support and resources they
need to share it. We’ve got other people who
may not want to know about this ‘meaning’ or
even have the capacity to fully understand it,
even if they did hear it. We’ve got people who
think they already know what that meaning is,
and others who don’t want to know about it even
if they did have the time. We’ve got people who
once having achieved a good connection on new
meaning with someone else, find that there are
reasons it was soon after dismissed, forgotten –
or maybe they don’t discover that and are left to
assume it was taken on board or it wasn’t.
Perhaps that same meaning was distorted to suit
different motives.
Is it any wonder
communication is difficult?
What can we do about this?
Firstly, let’s see communication for what it really
is. It’s just not one of the last lines on a project
plan and it’s not quick and easy. We are all
Executive Summary | Management & Leadership
The fifth point here is that we can get so involved
in details that we find it difficult to get clarity on
meaning at different levels simultaneously. Let’s
go back to the strategic message that was sent
out about ‘becoming a seamless organization’.
The receivers of that message will have already
thought about things like the fact that their car
needs servicing; what food they could serve at a
dinner party on Saturday; and that they must
check who accepted this afternoon’s meeting
request. On a day to day basis, the strategic
message will always compete for our attention
with the more immediate details that keep our
lives functioning.
what is the impact of ignorance? If you’ve
communicated something that you think makes
absolute sense then it’s easy to think your
message recipient will get the meaning too. Very
often we blindly continue onwards thinking we’ve
connected with someone when we haven’t.
Perhaps also, the message receiver thinks they
know exactly what you mean when they don’t.
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Executive
Summary
communicators – and as senders, we have a
responsibility to appreciate the positions of
others; and as receivers to open our minds up to
what kind of meaning others are trying to share
with us and why. After all, our advancement
depends on being well-positioned inside a real
context, not one we’d prefer to be in.
So once we recognize there is a need for good
communication on behalf of everyone in the
process, let’s recognize that communication is
about really connecting with others, not simply
about messages or channels. In many ways, the
phrase ‘slowing down to speed up’ applies more
to communication than any other discipline. In
the course of six months, would you rather do
three things well or ten things badly? That’s the
choice you’ve got with communication because it
takes time and resource to complete properly.
We have to invest time in communications that
really arrive, that hit home and we can only be
sure that’s happened by checking our meaning
has been understood by others and checking the
effect of that understanding in commercial terms.
What’s tough is the fact that you can’t easily
prove that an increased spend on communication
links to improved communication results directly.
If you understand how this woolly discipline
works you’ll know that an element of faith in
‘doing it properly’ pays off. This isn’t easy in
today’s data-obsessed world but the quick,
cheap electronic way forward really isn’t an
option on its own. Let’s face it, an email message
is quickly forgotten.
A mutually respectful
discussion with a line manager and their team
members sticks.
This article was written by Lindsay Bogaard of
Bogaard Arena www.lindsaybogaard.co.uk
Executive Summary | Management & Leadership
E-mail, the Blackberry, the internet and other
technologies have taken the logistical difficulties
out of information availability, but the real guts of
effective communication will always revolve
around the way we think as human beings.
Achieving results through communication is a
challenge
in
communication
awareness,
creativity, competence and co-ordination for all
message senders, receivers and leaders. If you
think that involves some kind of learning path for
everyone in your organization, then it probably
does. Organizational communication has long
been known as everyone’s business but mature
practices in this area have only just got going.
Why so slowly? Well, communication is simple in
theory but difficult to put into practice. □
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