Communication lies at the heart of any business. There is a simple thing that can be done to improve any businesses communications and yet few businesses ever pay any attention to it. As a draughtsman I quickly had to learn that you must assume the person who was looking at your drawing knew nothing. Believe me if it is possible to misunderstand something then people will.
You should never write as though you were having a conversation. When so much of communication is usually down to visual clues in a conversation when those visual clues are not available communication becomes much harder. I've often read in books about writing that you should think of yourself having a conversation. Writing is a tool of communication; it is not simply a way of conveying a conversation.
A little while ago I was involved in a project where we had to redevelop part of a web site. I had assumed from the beginning that we were working on one part of the site (the part I thought needed the most work) but the person employing me thought it was another part of the site. I was frustrated that they couldn't understand what I was talking about and they were frustrated that I couldn't understand what they were talking about. This is not an uncommon problem in business.
The real trick is to write in such a way that you communicate your message without overdoing the detail. There is nothing more annoying than having to read a simple message with a lot of other words in the way. Clearly there are good reasons for such thinking and many organizations take that advice to heart and it becomes policy. Any communication expert who studies business communication will tell you that such things need to be handled very carefully to keep employees and team members fully engaged.
Is it true that not everyone can be trusted with information? Well, information is power and if you power-up those who cannot control their integrity levels or choose not to, then in a way giving them the information makes you an accessory to their actions. And unfortunately, they have also been a studier of human societies and civilizations for long enough to see the problematic nature of the flow of information.
But, like water it does flow, information, like living organisms want to be free. Thus, the information just like water stopped in the river by beavers, well, eventually it will find a way, it always does. The right information is defined both as the correct information and only the need to know information.
There is little doubt that the business world locally, nationally and globally has been forever changed by the information age. Today, the world is closer together than ever before and an economic crisis in any one country has far-reaching effects elsewhere around the world. But, what will these new technologies be that increase businesses communications speed of transmission and bandwidth be like? Well, there will be light-speed communication around the globe using satellites and what we might perceive as infinite bandwidth.
Soon, we will have super small devices that operate by voice and eventually by thought. So, I guess the question you should be asking since all this is coming fast is; Have you considered how you will use this technology to do all you do better in your business? Well, think about it for a second, you can collaborate on designs. This may increase the effective of cell phone type communication by a factor of three.
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