There are some other topics I’ve been wanting to write about lately, but this one just keeps on giving…
I received an anonymous private reply to my previous post here on communications and the recent lunch meeting suggesting there are often other reasons people don’t communicate with each other besides not having an efficient infrastructure for distributing information. In these cases, we can develop the finest new tools to make sending and accessing information as easy as possible, get everyone trained on how to use them and communicate more effectively, etc., and nothing will change. We must first look in the mirror and ask ourselves why aren’t we communicating. Some possible non-communication responses to that question might be:
1) Information is power, a foundation for authority we don’t want to lose.
2) We are afraid of conflict and aim to slip things past people in hopes that no one who might disagree notices.
3) We are afraid someone will question our information and demand even more work from us, which we’d rather avoid.
I’m sure there are countless others, but I’m also convinced that a careful analysis behind these reasons for purposefully not communicating will reveal that they are, in fact, flawed. In this day and age, authority vested in the ownership of privileged information is doomed to fail. People lose authority and respect when hidden information is inevitably later revealed. If people disagree with your information/decision, better to get that disagreement out at the start than when you’re trying to get people involved to implement a plan. If a single person constantly creates discord in response to new information, then you have a management issue of that person, not a reason to stop communicating. Yes, you may get asked more questions and have to do more work, but if the result is better information, or a better decision, isn’t that work worthwhile? Furthermore, if you open your information to others, you will just as likely get support back from people with offers to help who would not have known to do so otherwise.
So, in addition to doing the experiments, and seeing what communication schemes might work better for us, I propose we need to first look seriously inward and see if there are other reasons we choose not to communicate. For if we don’t heed the latter, all the new tools and good intentions in the world will not fix the problem.
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