Communication: Companies Need Less…Not More!
July 31, 2007
I work with a large variety of CEOs, senior managers and key employees. If I ask about the needs and issues within the company, I almost always get the same response…”We need more communication.”
My reaction to that is that it is simply, WRONG!
Companies don’t need more communication. They need more clarity.
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Clarity of the vision of the company.
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Clarity of where the company is going (long term and short term).
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Clarity of HOW the company will get there.
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Clarity of individual roles and how those roles create value toward the vision.
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Clarity of how roles must intertwine in order to achieve extraordinary results.
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Clarity of how the company will hold itself and each individual accountable.
Think about a great basketball team. When things run smoothly within a team they find that less communication is needed, not more. When the team is really “in the zone” and everything is going perfectly, what is the coach doing? Very little! He’s not yelling, or sending in new plays or screaming at the assistant coaches. He’s letting the team perform at its peak level… because of their clarity of purpose.
The point is, when managers and employees have clarity of where they are going and how to get there they need less communication, not more.
Great teams don’t usually talk in paragraphs or even sentences to communicate. They are so in-tune with one another they talk in just few words and eye-contact. They have so much clarity of purpose among them that they require less communication, not more.
The next time someone in your company pushes for more communication, remember, “Don’t strive for more communication. Strive for more clarity!”
Written by David Woods David@giantpartners.biz
October 29, 2007 at 7:52 pm
[...] I couldn’t agree more with David Woods who makes the point that Companies Need Less Communications… Not More!…. [...]
October 30, 2007 at 9:17 pm
David,
I agree that we do need more clarity…but I do not think that we need less communication. We need better communication. But communication does not necessarily mean ‘talking.’ As you’ve stated, when the team has clarity, “they are so in-tune with one another they talk in just (a) few words and eye-contact.” This is still communication, just in a better and more continuous and clear format. Even the coach sitting on the bench is a very vivid form of communication…it says, “looks good fellas, just keep doing what you’re doing.” These are the kinds of communications we need MORE of.
March 6, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Excellent insight. It reminds me of this quote from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com,
“People think communication is good. But communication is not a fundamental good – it’s a necessary evil. The goal in organizing a company should be to reduce the amount of communication needed. Every minute spent communicating with your peers inside a company is a minute not spent improving the customer’s experience. This is a hard thing to explain, and people get it wrong all the time. The reason communication ends up being incredibly important is that it’s impossible to organize perfectly inside a company – so you need a ton of communication to compensate for the imperfections inherent in the organizational structure… You don’t strive for more communication. You strive for less and then recognize your limitations and communicate around them. You can tell where organizational structure is broken down by looking at where the most communication is happening”.