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Internal-External Customer Dilemma
If the biggest single choke-point within organisations is miscommunications leading to low morale, lack of trust, fear, conflict and poor teamwork, the biggest challenge for the entrepreneurial manager is to eliminate this choke point.
You must approach the elimination process as a challenge and an opportunity. You must synchronise all the resources and capabilities and maximise all the ‘people power’ so that everyone is working furiously towards the achievement of a shared vision. Only then will you achieve your organisation goals. The key question that must be answered fully is: ‘How do you get everyone in the organisation to unlock their potential for the greater good and happiness of the total organisation?’
People are more likely to learn, change, grow, develop and contribute when they believe that the new ‘way of doing things around here’ is both desirable and possible. Your major task is to create the environment for this to happen.
At Century Management, we work with you on the four major challenges for organisational communication:
1 To create and communicate an overall strategy for the organisation
The challenge for most organisations is to create and share a compelling strategy to which everyone becomes committed to.
Your objective is to create an open system through which managers and staff constantly question themselves, listen to others internally and externally, and observe changing circumstances. Managers constantly study the external environment and the internal environment so that the organisation can be competitive and futuristic.
Living the values, developing a sense of mission and energising the organisation with the compelling vision is the challenge for the professional communicator and the manager. The compelling vision specifies the strategic driving force of the organisation. It is central to the strategic and operational (tactical) goals.
2 To get goal focused
The second major purpose of organisational communication is to get everyone focused on future developments and goals. How do you get a totally integrated organisation-wide focus on future direction? How do you get everyone’s energy and effort moving forward in the same direction? The need for integration and co-ordination varies with the size of the organisation and the types of work undertaken. Small organisations can be controlled by a single boss. Large organisations require elaborate systems for integration while professional, divisionalised and creative organisations have different needs. You must study and be aware of the different systems and mechanisms necessary to make integrated, co-ordinated progress in your team or organisation.
The communication mechanisms for communicating with agents, sub-contractors and self-employed stake-holders are different from the traditional hierarchical methods of communicating with employed staff. Matrix type organisations combining project and functional type structures need a different communicating style than the traditional pyramidical hierarchy. Organisations which lack well-developed and appropriate communications systems and channels may be inefficient, wasteful, incompetent, and bureaucratic in dealing with outside partners.
The geographical spread of an organisation can cause communications barriers. An individual’s ability to communicate clearly can be hindered by the internal layout of his workplace. A poorly ventilated or over-heated environment will cause drowsiness, sickness and other physical ailments. Performance can be hindered by being in different offices, in different buildings and even on different sites. The result can be misunderstandings, frustration and disintegration on both formal and informal communication levels.
A major complaint that most organisations give me about their place of work is that it has a ‘them and us’ culture.
When a Century Management Consultant asks what their choke point is in terms of maximising the human resource, they invariably reply, ‘it’s them,’ meaning the workforce. When I ask the same open question of the workforce, they invariably reply ‘it’s them,’ meaning the management. One of the major de-motivators within organisations, and a major cause of communications breakdown, is ‘not knowing what’s going on’ and ‘not being in on things’ in their own organisation.
Management may assume that everyone knows everything about the company’s developments and initiatives. They are often puzzled when they realise that not everyone does know, or is a victim of misinformation and dis-information. Rumour is invented to fill the void caused by lack of communication and lack of information. Be aware of this.
3 To create and maintain a healthy, happy, self-confident organisation
How do you get every single person within your organisation to focus on the vision and the implementation of strategic goals within your organisation rather than engaging in energy-absorbing negative communication activities? Office politics are a major contributor to absorption of time, energy and stress within organisations.
The fundamental reason why communication breaks down, sometimes irreparably, within organisations is a gradual breakdown of trust. Low levels of trust between management and staff are the root cause of all ineffective communications in organisations. Low trust leads to low morale and low self-confidence, and ultimately, low productivity, wastage, accidents, absenteeism, unhappiness and lots of frustration for everyone concerned.
An organisation that has ineffective communications systems stemming from low trust and low morale is a low self-esteem organisation. You know that there is no wave of a magic wand that will change mistrust to trust overnight. Mistrust invariably invades an organisation like a cancer and once it takes hold it’s difficult to remove. You can sort out the physical resource problems of an organisation in a short period of time. You can do likewise with the financial resources and likewise with the time resources. Careful identity-management can change your external image. However, to change the mindset and the culture of an organisation takes time, expertise and patience, and a systematic integrated organisation-wide approach.
The first step towards the objective of a healthy, happy organisation is the building of trust. It’s virtually impossible to trust other people (‘them’) unless you understand the concept of self-esteem (eliminating fear) and the concept of self-responsibility (eliminating blame), for yourself and for the people employed by your organisation. Trust starts with building personal self-esteem, then interpersonal one-on-one development, then the team, and then the organisation. Customers ultimately ’smell’ this intangible extra.
Our experience at Century Management suggests that people rarely work consciously against the organisation. But unconsciously, they may have many different behaviours, attitudes and actions to show that they are not in harmony with management. Although it is doubtful that you will totally eradicate mistrust, you can slowly build trust and confidence among most people. This is the process of ‘bottling’ that intellectual capital. It’s an investment, but an investment that takes a long time to pay off.
4 To ensure that intelligent decision-making takes place
Our primary objective at Century Management is to work with people to help them to creatively solve problems by making intelligent decisions. A major choke point in decision-making is lack of accurate information or blocked channels of communication. Formal and informal information is transmitted upwards, downwards and across the organisation in a poor, ineffective or irregular way. ‘Nobody told me’ or ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it’ are oft-used responses by staff and by management. Sometimes there’s truth in these responses, sometimes they are used as a convenient cloak – the miscommunication has happened so many times that everyone now accepts such responses as acceptable and standard. As much as 80% of the problems will probably be found in the process flow but remember people manage the process.
You realise that the best solutions to local problems come from the people closest to operating the tasks in question. These people are your local experts. The skills of LOQVE are vital in intelligence-gathering within the organisation. Your organisation has the solutions to most of your problems under your own feet, but somehow the transmission and the receiving gets clogged up between the local experts and the decision-makers.
One of the best ways of gathering information is by walking the shop floor and having impromptu LOQVE sessions. Another way is to conduct annual structured surveys within the organisation. Yet another way is to channel information upwards through feedback sessions which would be facilitated by internal champions such as line managers.
Become a Master
Everyone is a communicator. The only question is: ‘How good are you at it?’ Everyone scores 10 out of 10 on some interactions. Everyone scores 0 out of 10 sometimes. The key question is: Do you average 4, 5, 6 out of 10, or 7, 8, 9 out of 10? You are being voted on daily. Your present state (emotional, professional, career, financial) is more a result of these votes than almost any other factor. You have a choice to ignore everything in this chapter and go your merry way like 80% of the population, or you can become a master communicator by carefully learning their application over time. Remember that all choices lead to consequences. Decide.
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