MANAGEMENT
Communication and its significance has been the choice of much debate between practitioners of management. For any organisation to be responsive and effective, it must have an inbuilt efficient communication structure.
Communication very loosely would be inclusive of spoken word, written word and sometimes the unsaid word. I will in this piece brush with all three modes but with great amount of economy. It implies that communication should be direct, simple and always to the point. Having been part of senior management at various institutions, I have spent much time reading memos and reports and analyses, synopses, where I had to meander through clutter of heavy dosage of what could have been avoided before I could get to know the purpose of a communication.
Managers misunderstand that writing would induce action. In some cases it may. But largely writing must be preferred to document only and not to initiate action only. For getting a job done, manager must rely on spoken word. A one on one meeting would do wonders in terms of results achieved, than would realms of communication through paper can ever be able to achieve.
In writing a communiqué, a manager must know its purpose. The temptation to get verbose, or the urge to impress the recipient with high sounding but low in value, words should always be avoided. I have come across many a written word, where I had difficulty to understand why a difficult word was used instead of the simple. ‘I wish to apprise .....’ can be easily replaced with, ‘I want to inform...’communication should be direct and simple. All communication should be purpose driven, if they have no purpose to achieve, then don’t communicate.
In today’s world of management by SMS, emails and other vehicles of social media, the purpose of communication is invariably slaughtered. While these mediums allow for a 24x7x365 days of communication facility, these also have in many a manner reduced the quality of communication.
Personally the abbreviated use of words is most disliked, but over time, I have fallen prey to it too.
Emails are a menace! Every single person in the organisation at the drop of the hat indulges into the pleasure of writing an email regardless of how trivial or unimportant and devoid of urgency the subject would be. Emails are a nasty form of communication, especially for those that have been cc’ed to over a dozen people. A single email generates a Niagara of return emails, because of the availability of the ‘reply all’ icon on the screen.
So the poor unrelated individual has to experience the torture of endless, back and forth communication. Once you have a pop on the screen ‘you have received a new email’, only the very tough in the resolve would not yield to the temptation of opening it. In reading unsolicited emails, so much precious time of a manager is lost.
In the corporate world or otherwise too, the possession of information is a significant advantage. The key here is that information must be critical and of use. A deluge of emails in your inbox does not in any manner indicate that the organisation has great regard and value for communication as a tool for effective management. An ill founded belief would be to think in such terms.
An enlightened manager would think like a wise man but would always choose to communicate in the language of workers. The command over language should not find itself over the use of difficult words but should exhibit in ensuring that the message intended is the message extracted by the recipients. For the purpose of dissemination of corporate information, organisations resort to use of reports, newsletters and bulletins, etc, but these vehicles are inadequate especially when high value information is to be shared with a few.
Good organisations formally or informally train their staff in the art of communication. But to do so there has to be an enabling environment, and a flourishing culture of openness. The fear of sharing truth has to be expunged. If the organisation is infested with senior managers whose claim to fame is that they are quiet, reserved, uncommunicative, and don’t share information, then such organisations can bury the thought of developing a culture of free, frank and open communication. Managers walk the tight rope between the reluctance to confide about either ongoing projects or plans for future development of newer products and services to the other end of the spectrum, where even the janitor who is neither trained nor has the skills or knowledge, is asked for an opinion.
The worst communication environment is when you discover about your company’s plans at social gatherings. This is truly reflective of the mindset at the top most level of the hierarchy who subscribe to keeping close to their chest all information. They live under an illusion that possession and not dissemination is the fountain head of maintaining power in the institution.
Great focus must be made towards the style of communication, more so when the communication is verbal. It is extremely important how the required words are said. There has to be resolute denial to temptation to say more than what is required. Never say a lot when little would do. Every thought can be thought clearly. But not everything thought ought to be said. Discretion is the valour in communication.
Silence more often is the best form of communication. If one wishes to make a few unrelated preliminary remarks, he may say in good humour as the late Dr Emorry Luccock said at the beginning of address, “I should like to make a few remarks before I say anything.” How much more jumbled can verbal communication be!
An efficient communication apparatus in an institution would allow flow of information from top down to down up. But for this to happen, the management ought to be enlightened. In an organisation where there is denial to two way communications, where there is retaliation for making a comment or offering an opinion, fear grips, and over a period of time, people refuse to talk. They go into their shells.
There is more to communication than merely written or spoken word. There is persuasive communication through eyes, gesticulations, bodily posturing, and holding head, representing either haughtiness or humility. And above all silence, is a great medium.
The objective of communication must harbour on informing and advising. In doing so, the choice of words should be simple. In the movie, My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins, the character created by George Bernard Shaw, makes a very apt comment about the flower girl (Audrey Hepburn) who speaks cockney, ‘we are divided by a common language.’ Confused communication can have deadly repercussions.
Borrowed from an announcement of the newspaper that proudly published the notice stating, ‘owing to the overcrowded conditions of our columns, a number of births and deaths are postponed this week.’ Finally about those communications that are epitaphic and shrouded in the mystery of ‘private and confidential’. I have never understood why I and many others write this appellation, for in today’s world, there is no such thing as private or confidential. All information is now in public domain and confidentiality is shredded to pieces with liberal broadcasting facilities.
The writer is a senior banker and freelance columnist
