Benjamin Disraeli once said, “The area of conversation consists of the exercise of two fine qualities: You must originate and you must sympathize; you must possess at the same time the habit of communicating and the habit of listening. The union is rare, but irresistible.”
Denoting this concept within an organization is not the easiest of tasks. Too often, politics and hierarchies impede the free communication needed to propel a company into the next era. Given this, if a company aspires to create an environment that enables change and flexibility, the organization needs to reframe itself to be successful not just today, but for tomorrow and the next day.
For all that was lost in the Internet bubble created two years ago, there was a glimmer of hope in the way boundaries were dismantled and communication freely flowed throughout an organization.
As mavericks of the business world, various e-companies had the right idea when it came to titles, rules, regulations, and structure: do without them, let communication flow freely, and allow people to be accountable for themselves.
– Better, Greater Communication
As the roles people perform are required to be more adaptable and flexible, so must the companies that employ them. In fact, companies must take the lead to set up an environment that employs better and greater communication.
There is a potential for synergy between the rigid modern organizational model and the digital culture that can be reframed into a digital postmodern organization of the future.
When reframing an organization for the future, there are a few simple understandings that must be acknowledged.
First, companies are collections of people. People are part of a community and not property. Understanding this notion compels one to realize that people are more than a means to an end.
People enable the success or demise of an organization. Creating a sense of community enables success while separatism promotes defeat and an effective means of communication will facilitate this ideology. Second, information is more readily available today than ever in the past. In fact, too much information is available. The difficulty of managing information lies in the ability to filter out the information that is unnecessary and focusing on what is important.
Few people realize the skills involved with being able to focus in a whirlwind of information. Yet, those companies and leaders who can grasp this issue and operate without straying from objectives will outperform their competition any day of the week.
Lastly, communicating within the organization, both internally and externally, involves an entirely new skill set in today’s electronic era. The advantages to electronic data include effective time to write and think, location flexibility, blind status, and higher interactivity.
– E-mail Allows For Open Dialogue
Location flexibility is inherent in today’s electronic era. People can work from home, planes, cars, and trains. Faxes, e-mail, and data in general can be obtained virtually anywhere at anytime. Furthermore, today’s modernity allows for a blind status of individuals. Without names, one can be more conspicuous with e-mail, Web sites, and other personal devices.
E-mail users become blind to the ethnic and racial challenges that impede many organizations and the people working for them. Users are subject only to the words communicated and thereby are blind to the prejudices of society and others.
Last, but not least, today’s electronic era allows for higher interactivity. Documents and projects can be shared simultaneously with others across the globe while the writer never leaves the office or home.
Challenges include the slower pace of communication, timing, sensitivity, writing skills, and technical difficulties. The challenges that inhibit greater digital communication include the slower pace of the written word.
As multitasking and time splicing become the norm of the employee, e-mails can be a mundane way of sharing urgent information. Knowing when to pick up the phone has become a challenge in itself. Timing in the digital age factors for decision making and understanding of points of view.
Reading an e-mail is a one-way communication because the ability to acquire immediate clarification or feedback has been reduced to a reply that can take hours or even days to achieve. Again, knowing when to choose an alternate means of communicating will solve this issue.
– Say What You Mean
Sensitivity to one’s communication has become such an issue that emoticons have been created to express one’s true feelings. The following are some examples:
😀 laughing smile; :'( crying; 😮 oh!
In addition, abbreviations have become commonplace as seen in the following examples:
BTW: by-the-way; OIC: oh, I see!; PU: that stinks!; BRB: be right back; LOL: laugh out loud; and J/K: just kidding.
Being able to say what you mean and have that meaning heard on the other end is critical with electronic transmission. In fact, the use of sarcasm is strongly opposed unless you really know the person on the other end and have a prior understanding of each other.
Another challenge includes writing skills. Correct spelling and grammar are often overlooked in today’s fast paced environment.
Technology does not come without complications. As the digital era continues to evolve every six months to a year, so do the problems that become new to the evolution. Reliability is a term that digital industries pressing forth continually strive toward, yet rarely achieve on a consistent basis. Part of the problem lies in the turbulence of the industry and part of it lies in the lack of uniformity between companies, governments, and structures.
The responsibility, therefore, goes to the end user and the ability to switch gears when one means of communication breaks down.
The key to communicating in today’s digital era is treating electronic data as just another means of communication. Do not rely too heavily on just digitization. Diversify the skills necessary to cover personal, analog, and the digital communication, so when one breaks down, you will have other avenues to take. Reframe the organization to inclusively embrace the digital world instead of having the digital world reframe the organization. This creates flexibility without dependence. Flexibility enables success and success is the goal for every individual and the organization.
Wise is vice president for Equis, San Diego.
