Ever heard the cure to all problems? "Communicate, communicate, communicate!" ...Yea, think of this...
Can you picture that? Yes, it was funny to watch. In the end, the local never understood what the tourist was talking about. The tourist left angry and frustrated!
That's what communication sometimes feels like in organizations particularly during times of change. And yet, all too often executives find great solace in a 'communication plan' as if communication will make up for the lack of ownership, disagreements at the top, misunderstood cultural factors, and some times, a plain bad strategy.
I'm not saying communications isn't important. Quite to the contrary, I say it is critical, it's crucial, it's vital. It just isn't enough. In fact, many of my communications colleagues with whom I've worked closely have told me their clients have unrealistic expectations of communications efforts.
So, what's missing? Understanding! We may communicate until we are blue in the face but without understanding we have accomplished nothing, just like the tourist and the local. So how do we achieve that? Here are some key ingredients I've learned...
- Clarity - Message needs to be simple and straightforward.
- Relevance - Message must make sense to the intended audience. Know your audience.
- Accuracy - Information must be factual, verifiable, and trustworthy.
- Context - This is closely linked with relevance but it goes beyond knowing the intended audience. It requires that a change leader understands the conditions on the ground during the change transition and how the message is likely to be perceived. It requires gathering the 'voice of the organization' to get beyond the rumors and understand the root causes. It requires meeting people where the are in the transition process.
- Feedback - Is the process of closing the loop to know what the effect of the communication effort was. Surveys and feedback boxes may help but real dialog happens most effectively face to face. Examples include interviews, informal discussions, focus groups, and others. Social media such as IM, Novel Vibe, Wikis, and other tools also can provide a way to gather feedback. In all cases however, people must feel engaged in a conversation, not just asked for information.
Without dialog that leads to understanding, change leaders may feel the frustration the tourist felt trying to get directions from the local. It may actually feel like talking a different language, very loud!
I agree with much of what you say, Marcelino, but I take issue with the way you've presented your argument.
ReplyDeleteYour headline shouts (to use your own anecdote) that "COMMUNICATION IS OVERRATED" but the content of your article then shows why you think that communication is key, vital, crucial. This is a contradiction. You say successful communication should be accurate and trustworthy - but your headline says the opposite of your content. Unless i've misunderstood your point in which case I apologise.
I agree that communication represents many pieces in the complex jigsaw of change management. There are others - planning, leadership, alignment of managers etc. So I agree with the content of what you've written. I'm less comfortable with the way you've headlined it - I was expecting something different when I read the headline.
Very fair Martin...I've changed the title of the article but let me explain.
ReplyDeleteOften what we call communication is really just information broadcasting. It is this 'messenger-message-receiver' narrow model that I think is overrated. We expect information distribution to do too much, more than it's really signed to do. I say, it's not enough. There needs to be dialog to create understanding. that is real communication but often that's not how we think of it in large organizations. We expect that just because we said so it must be so and that people will just get it. But they don't.
I guess this exchange is a good example of what we are talking about here isn't it? Thank you for commenting and helping create mutual understanding.
One more point to add to both of our points. I agree with you that there is much more to change management than communications (information, dialogue, etc.) such as leadership, planning etc., as you have pointed. I would also add to the list things such as implementation team alignment, strong business case, alignment of systems and structures, and behavior change. That's what a good change plan should address. The challenge is that often people confuse a communications plan with a change management plan, which are not really the same thing. Another way in which I think communications is expected to do more than is realistic.
ReplyDeleteFrom Fred Aubin (Organizational Change Practitioners LinkedIn group):
ReplyDeleteCommunication is fundemental to maintaining unity of thought, purpose and action. The article asserts that communication is critical and I couldn't agree more. I've said it before and I'll say it again, "the three Cs of strategic coherence are communicate, communicate, communicate".
However, I like to a maintain a more simplistic (or perhaps draconian) view of understanding. If collective or individual understanding is a performnace measure of your strategic comms plan and it is not resonating, or it is not promoting understanding, then its rather obvious isn't it? Either your comms requirements in your mission anlysis was flawed, the messaging plan was flawed, the media methodology was flawed, or the communicator lacked credibility ......or all of the above (I've seen examples where all four issues were a systemic train wreck). If you are communicating and understanding remains ellusive - fix one or all of the aforementioned issues.
Great points Fred. Is it your experience that organizations measure
ReplyDeleteunderstanding? If so, how? What I see most often is what I call information
broadcasting with little thought about measuring performance or
communication effectiveness. See blog and comments there for more detail
but I'm curious what you've seen organizations do to measure comms
effectiveness.
From Fred Aubin (Organizational Change Practitioners LinkedIn group):
ReplyDeleteMarcelino. It is my experience that most successful instituions measure the effectiveness of their communications through their various performance measurement adjuncts, but as to whether those metrics are indicative of "understanding" may be a specious argument. I have found that command-centic organizations (such as militaries) have good processes for measuring understanding but it is also easier for them as they have shared lexicon. Also, they are particularly good at measures and feedback loops to ensure understanding of higher intent prior to launching into the execution phases. This is the part that I usually see as being deficient in private-sector organizations. Good ones have a series of communicative feedback loops and milestones to measure the effectiveness (or perhaps the need to modify) their comms plans or to ensure compliance with executive level intent. Bad ones don't and only measure the effectiveness of their comms plan upon completion of the activity.
Fred, thanks for sharing your experience. Yes, private sector most often measures activity completion, specifically, completion of a communication task (delivering a message, carrying on an event, etc.), seldom, do they measure true communications effectiveness as measured by increased understanding. But even in that case, communications can only accomplish so much. Behavior change that will ensure the change program is successful will require more than effective communication, as critical as it is.
ReplyDeleteFrom Viaan Visser (Change Consulting LinkedIn group):
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with the statement, only because of one thing, the loose usage of the word communication. By doing that communication is made cheap and ineffective. How many times have you heard the phrase or similar to: "...there's a breakdown in communication..." or "...we didn't know about it..."? Is it realy communication's fault? I'd like to meet this bloke named communication one day and smack him silly, but it is not really his fault is it? Communication comes in many different shapes and forms and is only the medium of coding and decoding messages and learning. The problem is that not everyone has the same version or models of coding and decoding communication. Then you need to consider the different groups of communication e.g. written, verbal, body language etc. All of these have sub components too, which makes it more complex. It is how we use the mechanisms and styles that makes the difference. A few basics would be utilising the different levels of communication, whilst making use of the senders and recievers principle, and most important of all, put (and keep) responsibility where it belongs. If everyone in a commincation channel stich to their responsibilities you'll be able to eliminate the qquoted phrases above, because if I'm responsible and know I'm supposed to know something, but don't, what am I doing to find out....
Viaan, if I understand correctly what you are saying (I'm taking responsibility to understand!), I agree that communications is misunderstood. Specifically, from my experience, the problem often is that we confuse information broadcasting with real communication. The blog has a couple of comments that elaborate on this point but essentially, what I often see missing is the dialog that enables understanding. Without that, communication is just noise. That's the point of the opening story in the blog.
ReplyDeleteFrom Viaan Visser (Change Consulting LinkedIn group):
ReplyDeleteMy appologies, I missed the blog, but yes, I fully agree.
From Andrew Lee (Change Consulting LinkedIn group):
ReplyDeleteHi Marcelino and Viann,
>The point is well made that communication can't just be one-way transmission. As Marcelino suggests, if understanding is missing there is no real (i.e. two-way) communication.
>The other factor that nees to be present is the credibility that comes from the right person delivering the message in the right time and place. Getting the words right is not enough, if the person delivering them is not known and trusted. And the situation has to provide the right context - if there something else happening that distracts from the message or undermines its plausibility it doen't matter how well-chosen the words are.
>Another way of putting is that who is speaking and when, is as important as what is being said. People are very sensitive to disparities between words and actions - or as Emerrson put it, 'What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.'
Andrew, thanks for the comment. I agree credibility is a key factor. I would add that dialogue can effectively create credibility. The whole point of the blog article is that sending information out, as important as it is, isn't enough, and that dialogue is necessary to achieve understanding. What you point out here is actually something I'll write about in one of my next articles. There are so many other things that are necessary for change to take place. Communication that's credible and that creates understanding is one ingredient but there are many others that compliment and in many cases enhance communication. Credible, trust worthy leadership is one of them. There are others as well as you know.
ReplyDeleteFrom John Fisher (Change Consulting LinkedIn group):
ReplyDeleteI believe that communication should never be under rated or estimated. However I also believe that communication is actually a process and that a vital (if not the vital) element is that the message is not what is sent but what is received and hence any communication must include some element of wither feedback or check of comprehension.
I also agree that credability (or possibly Trust as credability is arguably a sub set of trust) is another key element in "selling" the message and I believe Merharabin (not sure spelt his name right but the 55/38/7 man) did some further research around credability of the communicator that found it is an important element of acceptance of the message. Something that resonates with my personal experience of being communicated to.
From Margaret Clayton (Organizational Change Practitioners LinkedIn group):
ReplyDeleteFred, I like your point about the feedback loops, they do help to improve a common understanding when information has been passed down to the frontlines. Unfortunately companies frequently generalize communications, which causes people to try and read between the lines and generate their own interpretations. The leaders of the feedback loops are often communications specialists and may be ineffective at leading to the common understanding. Each loop may reach it's own conclusions. It is a real challenge.
From Tim Johns (Change Consulting LinkedIn Group):
ReplyDeleteAfter over 20 years running communications for major corporations, I started to realise that although leaders were talking very few people were actually listening. So I used to devise ever more sophisticated methods to engage leaders with their teams and outside stakeholders. Then I realised that although the reasons why so many people switched off from leadership messages were many and varied, the key one was the gap between what people said and what they did. In other words, communication cannot be the solution as long as it is out of sync with behaviour.
Tim, I could not have said it any better. Leadership behavior trumps communication (and any change management intervention for that matter) any day!
ReplyDelete