We have available to us an unprecedented amount of
communication channels in both our Business and Personal lives. Take a casual
inspection of a typical working desktop I would take a wager that you will see
at least 5 distinct channels, all of which offering a way to communicate with a
different audience, in a slightly different way. But are we simply talking
more, and listening less?
There has been a lot of theorising in recent years about the
‘death of email’ as a previously indispensable Business tool for timely
communication. Indeed the latest and greatest in Business collaboration
offerings from Basecamp, Evernote, Google, and the like all extoll the benefits
of a new kind of communication and sharing. So with a new forum here, and a
collaboration portal there, we are presented with yet more subtly different
channels in which to lay down our burden of information.
But what is the real basis of good communication? Humans are social creatures of a somewhat
awkward persuasion, making definitive answers to this difficult to achieve. One
way to quantify a successful communiqué would be the efficiency in relaying
information, which is something that many struggle with. To quote French
Theologian Blaise Pascal (albeit in an English translation): “I would have
written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” Brevity is the enemy of
time and perhaps we just aren’t very good at explaining everything through one
medium.
Another way of looking at the challenge is to examine the
sheer breadth of our social output. When we speak to somebody face to face, it
is said that upwards of 80% of what you actually say is non-verbal.
Body-language, tone, expressions and stature all provide a rich subtext which
makes mere words seem akin to shouting down a cup and string to deliver Opera.
Perhaps we need 5, 10, or even 20 discrete channels just to exorcise our inner
urge to explain what we think, and why we think it.
Whatever the reason for rapidly growing range of
communication channels, we should think of them all as part of single pipe.
Imagine your broadband line as not just a small bundle of cables, but of a rich
braid of threads which you and your employees, are using to weave messages
which fly off to their destination. To this end there is no use in attempting
to narrow or stem the tide of communication options open to us, we must instead
embrace it.
But this invariably is easier said than done. I was in
recent discussions with my old Secondary School where I spent many years in
what now seems like a very simple era. With no Facebook, Twitter, and very few
Smartphones we revelled in the opportunity to get home and log in to the (now
extinct) MSN messenger in order to chat with friends. Emoticons were still
novel, and an acute representation of the clamour to better express analogue
feelings through a digital pipe. So the individual motivation hasn’t changed,
but the circumstances certainly have. The School in question has an
unprecedented challenge in deciding which channels to boycott, manage, or even
endorse in order to make communication between School and Students work. The
challenge is no different for Businesses or even individual relationships,
where the same message through different channels can have a significantly
different impact.
So we face an exciting time, but also one that requires
action. Your staff want to communicate, and like a trickle of water through
rock, they will find a way. Surely better to show them the way by installing
the kind of solution which you think best fits your Business and way of
working? Otherwise there is the real danger that everyone will be shouting, and
nobody will hear…
