Five reasons why communication fails

I just thought I'd share an article from The Business Ledger by Ramon Greenwood, a previous senior vice president of American Express, who believes there are five major reasons for a breakdown in internal communications:

1. Failure to listen
2. Sporadic communications
3. Dishonest or misleading communications
4. Actions don’t jibe with the words
5. Communications are confusing and irrelevant

Under this last point, Greenwood says:

Management fails to communicate in clear and effective languages that everyone can understand and can relate to. Or the communications media is filled with fluff: news of brides, babies and dead fish, plus canned cartoons and fillers. A warm and fuzzy climate is induced while the issues that deal with the health of the business are ignored.

This last point brings to mind a recent debate on the Comms Network where one practitioner wanted to dissuade his team to use "glitz" when communicating change in his organization, two very different responses were published in SCM last month, one from Stacey Heath, from Allstate Insurance Company who said they used the candid, straight forward approach during recent, major change. The other from Pitney Bowes' John Clifford, who said that positivity and cheerfulness is what people need to get through change, and "a little branding need not be seen as 'glitz'."

What do you think of the rest of Greenwoods points above, and what approach do you think works best when communicating change - candid or optimistic? Can there be a balance of the two?

Comments

[Sue Dewhurst]

Hi Sona, on the change point I don't think you can generalise - it depends on the culture (organisational & national), the context and the nature of the change and how people are affected by it.

I've worked in a call centre environment where we used to find fun ways to introduce change where we could and people loved it. I've worked in other organisations and circumstances where people would have been upset, angry and/or cynical if we'd been anything other than candid and straightforward.

Thinking through the impacts, understanding your stakeholders and doing some research pays dividends. I remember distinctly a focus group where I was taking people's input about a series of forthcoming roadshows in the midst of a fairly hard-going change programme and was told in no uncertain terms 'Don't even THINK of trying anything rah rah. We're having a xxxx time and we're not five year olds.' Quotes like this brought it home loud and clear to the senior team why our approach in that case needed to be glitz-free.

[Annie Waite]

I think I'd go for a mixture of the two, making sure the candid side of things is evident enough!

More experienced employees who might have been through a lot of change processes, may either understand the need for a fair dose of optimism, or they may veer the other way and wish they were just being given the cold hard facts and the reasons for the change.

However, there will doubtless be some employees, perhaps those less experienced in the business world who will need the positive angle emphasised in order to get behind a change programme.

[Sandra Fransen]

I agree with Sue...it would depend on the news in terms of the tone. But I always think information should always be candid. Spinning information just doesn't work...I haven't seen it work. I think too, providing an opportunity for employees to speak back, to have a discussion is a really healthy way to approach change comms. One other thing...if it's a big change...as in layoffs for example...I think it's best if managers make time to discuss it with their teams--well ahead of any announcement hitting the media.