As an organization grows or its processes become more complex, the importance of the quality of information received by those providing, for example, a service or performing an activity, increases. In other words, the quality of what is delivered is closely linked to the quality of the information provided to the recipient, which, in turn, depends heavily on the quality of communication—an art not everyone masters and therefore requires professionals who can either design an appropriate communication strategy or implement it in operations.
I have recently witnessed how important processes related to the provision of certain services critical to the success of a large international undertaking, carried out simultaneously in Canada, the United States and Mexico, have been put at risk as the information that should flow to the areas and people in charge of the processes is not received with the necessary quality, that is, with timeliness , clarity and truthfulness , through the appropriate channels, which must be perfectly identified and coordinated.
I witnessed the same information being transmitted by two or more sources, often contradicting each other. A lack of information is just as detrimental as an excess of it, and the number of sources from which it originates is equally harmful. Lacking information prevents things from happening, while having too much of it on the same subject complicates matters and jeopardizes their timely and proper execution. Receiving five or six messages about a matter, providing or requesting information from different people within the same department or from other departments, is stressful for anyone.
Overwhelming an employee involved in processes that require concentration, precision, and action with untimely, confusing, inaccurate, irrelevant information, and worse, pressuring them to work based on it, only to suddenly receive a new message radically changing something, does not contribute much to the success of their work. Nor does it help to overwhelm them repeatedly with requests for information on the same topic from various sources, especially when the information has already been provided to the same areas of the organization.
What’s incredible is that internal and external communication problems aren’t limited to small businesses, medium-sized enterprises, or organizations based in developing countries. I’ve seen, not once, but several times, how a large, globally-oriented entity, based in one of the world’s most prosperous and organized nations, with substantial budgets and resources, and supposedly staffed by top-tier professionals with access to cutting-edge information technologies, ends up doing a terrible job of communicating effectively. I repeat, they complicate and jeopardize even their most essential processes, starting with those related to providing critical information.
Comment and follow us on LinkedIn: @GrupoT21
