Tuesday, September 23, 2008

5.1 Interpreting frequency of communication

Chapter 15 talks about analyzing communication, I think that we can learn a lot about an organization from the way in which messages are sent.  The medium, frequency, sender, etc. say a lot about the organization.  For example, in our organization we receive emails once in a while from our MD titled company news that has a summary of what's happening in the organization.  We also receive emails when someone senior has joined the firm or when something very important has happened.  These emails always come from someone at the MD level.  However, in our particular group we don't interact using emails or even meetings. Messages are only sent when there is work to be done and meetings are only held for very specific purposes.  For example, there was a new hire in our department last week and I didn't even know about it.  

I think this lack of communication within our department is somewhat disturbing.  Is it because our immediate boss assumes we know what's happening within our own group and there's no need for a message to be sent?  Or is it because they think that it's enough if we have the big picture and that there's no need for group level announcements, etc?  It seems to me that there should be emails, meetings, updates, etc. from my immediate boss to keep the group up to date and connected.  I wonder what this implies about the communication structure in this particular organization vs. communication within the group? 

3 comments:

zamoradesign said...

Communications about the organization and within the organization should be important. I can understand your disappointment in the lack of communications. For instance in my organization I have been trying to educate the administration about the advantages of coordinating and designing all communications through one source (outlet).

Not only will the communications look good, but also the message from the organization to the public will be more professional. In addition to being mindful of the communications for the public I also suggested having the top managers create blogs or weekly status reports regarding the happenings at the organization. The organization has a weekly newsletter, but that’s filled with illnesses, deaths, births, promotions, and upcoming events.

I believe that giving the managers the task of documenting the direction of projects; reports on on-going investigations; results on political decisions and how they impact the personnel; are all important news that members can use.

crives said...

I find it funny that the in the smaller teams there is less communication than there seems to be from the top down. I have informal conversations with others on my team but I am very unclear what the objectives are of each of them. There are only 12 of us! The communications team that I work in has 4 different functions: executive communications, communication operations, market intelligence and pr. But each of these functions has no insight or alignment around what the other team is doing. We actually had a brainstorming session yesterday to see how we could create a better partnership between each of these functions in the communications team. I suggested a monthly “debrief” so that each person goes around the table and discuss the projects they have just completed or are in the works, what the struggles and challenges are that they faced or are facing, the asks and needed assistance of others on the team, and get clear buy in from all the stakeholders. I think we will try this out. There needs to be more structure to even the way our small team communicates.

Hapa said...

I found this conversation odd since my last job had the opposite problem... too much frequency of communication. Similar to our chapter on information overload, my teammates felt the need to prove themselves through excessive communication.

One co-worker in particular would type an email for everything she did or anyone she talked to... CC'ing the entire department. Her rationale was that she wanted the manager to know she was working hard and a public paper trail for all her interactions. Personally, I found it annoying as heck. Worse... it created a trend where everyone would cover themselves by trying to openly document tasks and diverting responsibility and blame to others.