It’s a well understood rule of business that organisations thrive when information flows freely around its many layers and hierarchies.
This is true whether you choose to take the lesson from the various corporate scandals that have produced sheepish executive statements about an unfortunate lack of knowledge, or from the blazing success of buzzing, creative start-ups that win big on the back of an egalitarian ideas-sharing ethos. Knowledge — and its proper communication around a business — appears to be a regular and prominent part of success.
The important thing to remember with all this talk is that it needs to be a genuine conversation, not a droning monologue from the boardroom. Perhaps not surprisingly, many will immediately frame the idea of business communication in terms of a desire for a stream of strategic information to flow from leaders to employees. Very often, there can be a reasonable perception of an information gap between those sitting in the executive offices and the employees getting on with enacting corporate strategy. Making sure this perception is minimised, and that — in reality — the gap is at least small enough to make no difference, requires that an organisation works especially hard to regularly and transparently share important business news with employees.
Doing so helps avoid the trap of providing room for fear, misinformation and inference to “fill in the blanks” left by a dearth of clear understanding. It can remove the scent of a corporate smokescreen around sensitive topics, allowing employees to feel they are on the inside of business processes, rather than an essentially powerless part of the corporate machinery.
Indeed, it also presents the opportunity for a business to open up the conversation, inviting employees to feedback on decisions. In the process, this means a firm can tap into broader sources of ideas and knowledge while keeping employees genuinely engaged through an ongoing demonstration that their opinions are truly valued.
This is, without doubt then, an extremely important element of good business, but the flow of information also needs to run the other way too — from lower down to the very top. Managers, leaders, and the CEO in particular, can often be genuinely isolated from important information because of their position and status within an organisation.
We might all, for example, be able to think of a time where we have told a manager what we felt they wanted to hear rather than what they should have been told. Or, maybe, have had a winning idea or a shuddering concern that we kept to ourselves because of a fear that it would be misinterpreted or badly received.
If avoiding this situation requires those at the top to be open and evidently willing to listen, it also requires those further down to be ready and motivated to share their thoughts in an organisational environment that isn’t averse to disruptive suggestions.
Part of this comes down to an individual leader being available and keen to listen through whatever means they are prepared to open — be that regular open-house meeting times, confidential email suggestions, or an internal solution that utilises social media-style channels to get a conversation going. However, it equally rests on a broader corporate culture that actively encourages — indeed positively rewards — good communication.
Think back to those examples of corporate scandals, for example, and every time an executive claimed they weren’t in possession of the facts of the matter, it can often be traced back to a corporate culture that routinely prioritised results at the expense of the process. Nobody spoke up, everyone focused solely on their own area, and people didn’t voice concerns because they didn’t feel it would go anywhere.
Such a culture is always likely to swirl increasingly downward towards toxicity, and it is no surprise that the worst corporate scandals nearly always end with a resolution to comprehensively revise a company’s culture and its capacity to communicate.
Of course, communication on its own is not enough. No business will get very far if it is simply talking away without actually having anything worth saying.
However, where a company possess the skills and knowledge it needs to be a success, it is the embrace of a positive, productive culture of communication that will give it a boost against its competition.
The writer is CEO of Abu Dhabi University Knowledge Group (ADUKG).
