Did You Say Something? Why Communication Is Everything

Well, no, we're not quite saying that communication is everything: it's not the universe nor in fact is it a decent pint of best bitter. It is however the crucial matter in what defines the success or not of a business. This might seem a little odd really. Surely having great products at decent prices is the most important thing? A monopoly always helps as well perhaps?

Ah, yes, but how are these things achieved? What needs to be remembered is that the value of a modern corporation is actually in the information locked up in the minds of the people who work in it. If people don't communicate then how will this value be unlocked?

For example, think of, say, the design manager or architect of a house builder. They will, by virtue of the years put in to get to that sort of position, be rich in both years and experience. They will obviously be able to read blueprints and also design things, may even have, in their early years, have done a certain amount of work on CAD systems (well, maybe, that depends).

But within the organization, where is the knowledge and expertise of what a modern CAD system can do? How much more quickly it can render drawings perhaps, or whether and to which parts directories it will link? If a new system is needed should it be Unix? AutoCad on a PC? Well, as should be clear senior management simply doesn't know the answers to these questions. Certainly parameters can be set, budgets, desirable features, but the actual decisions will have to be delegated to those with that specialist knowledge.

That all seems clear and logical we hope? Good, but the other side of such delegation is that communication becomes ever more important. What exactly are those parameters? What are the goals that we're all supposed to be aiming for? It isn't just that the specialist knowledge needs to be passed up the organization, it is also that the more general guidance needs to be passed down it: not only does management need to hear what they don't know, the specialists have to be told what the aim is.

Of course, this also applies to the use of an outside specialist like Talisman in the recruiting field. Communication is essential so that they both get the right brief and also so that you hear what they are actually saying back. But then that's the most difficult part of all communicating: we're all usually pretty good at the talking part, it's the listening that sometimes causes problems.