CIO
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By Chuck Martin
There’s some hope for those who feel overwhelmed by communication overload.
While the volume of internal communication may be daunting, the overall effectiveness of that communication is on the rise.
And that’s good news, considering just how many interactions busy executives and managers have to deal with hour to hour and day to day.
The majority of senior executives and managers rate communication, such as discussion and information sharing, between departments as effective, based on a global survey by NFI Research.
More than half of business leaders also say that the effectiveness of communication between departments has increased over the past few years.
As might be expected, more people in small companies, rather than large ones, rate effectiveness of communication as being high.
One way to improve the effectiveness of communication is to make sure that those most affected by the communication are most involved, while saving others from wasting their time.
"Meeting formats were changed so that only those that had an active role in the agenda were invited," said one survey respondent. "Problem solving went up dramatically, and those that used to suffer through meetings at which they had no purposeful input were much happier to be excluded."
Without such selectivity, communication effectiveness may go up for some, but overwhelm others with irrelevant information.
The key, of course, is to make sure the right people continually receive the right information, so that they stay connected to the larger business picture.
"I have placed a continual focus on this every year since becoming CEO six years ago," said a respondent. "That said, it is a never-ending work in progress. It is very hard to get people’s heads out of their inbox and to think that there are others who need to know how what they are doing will affect them."
The challenge is that with people moving so fast and such focus on the challenge or crisis of the moment, time is not always taken to share information with those who need it.
"The greatest challenge isn’t directly related to communication. It’s having time to communicate," said one respondent. "Being a global company with teams spread out across the world, the different time zones add an additional communication challenge."
Though it can sometimes get out of control, e-mail has actually helped break down some of the internal communication barriers, since it is so easy to send an e-mail to just about anyone.
"I can get away with communications to my head
