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Unit VI business communication
Text ¹ 1
HOW INFORMATION TRAVELS
1 Managers do not work in isolation; once they acquire information they will often wish to pass it on. To be most effective – as we shall see – a message should be sent in the form most suited to the receiver (and that is not necessarily the form easiest for you, the sender). When you submit a recommendation to your boss you will summarize the argument as best you can, stressing the facts that support your case. When you were originally collecting the information, you may have received some items that later turn out to be irrelevant. You will not wish to waste the time of senior management with these items—it is your job to filter out the unnecessary.
2 In a similar vein, when decisions are passed down to you, from on high, you will wish to 'translate' them into appropriate terms for your staff. This can sometimes take the form of receiving orders and passing on detailed instructions. The manager is thus the hub of a system of communications – a one-man communication centre (see Fig. 1.1), as well as being a powerhouse of ideas, an initiator of action, and a thinking man to boot. Information and questions come up to him; answers, decisions, and instructions go down from him. The junior manager is in the same relationship to his superiors as are his staff to him. The good manager is a good communicator – and usually, vice versa.
Higher management
O
rders
Information
Decisions Questions
Recommendations
Information
Information
P
UBLIC
THE
MANAGER
COLLEAGUES
Teach Information
General Knowledge
Instructions Information
D
ecisions Questions
F
UTURE
MANAGERS
STAFF
MAGAZINES
ETC.
Fig.1.1. The manager is the hub of a system of communication
3 Communications of all kinds are what make an organization work. Without adequate communications an organization will soon grind to a halt. And communications are usually intended to follow the route of the established management hierarchy.
4 Formal communications will, of course, pass up and down the pyramid of management as intended. What is too often forgotten is that there are other communication paths. In any organization there are inevitably social links that are unofficially and informally used to transmit 'interesting' information. ('Interesting' information can be defined as that affecting people.) The grapevine includes not only the social links but also everything from office gossip to post-room misinformation. Every office, every factory, every organization, has its grapevine.
The good communicator will be aware of the grapevine and plug into it. Not all that he obtains from it will be complimentary, nor will it always be correct, but it will always be interesting and often useful. At times the manager can feed information into the grapevine himself. If he is not to lose all credence though, his input must always be correct.
5 Communication is, as we have already said, a two-way process. It is not complete until the message has been received – and understood. The extent to which the message is understood is more important than the way or form in which it is sent. This means that the transmission of messages should always be in the form best understood by the person receiving them. Some things are best said, some best written down. Throughout this book that principle is repeated: think first, last, and all the time about the recipient or audience or reader. Adjust the writing, the speaking, and the arithmetic to suit him. And if pictures will help, give him a picture.
Clearly, the style and quality of communication will depend not just on the sender and the receiver but also on their relationship to each other. A small, informal, organization will suggest a different style of communication to a large, rigidly-controlled, hierarchical one. In all cases it is necessary to select the best mode for communication.
Methods of communication
6 Animals communicate with barks, whinnies and snarls. It is man’s ability to transmit more complex messages by a variety of modes that, among other things, separates him from the animals. Fundamentally, however man communicates only by sight or by sound, but within those categories, there are others. Moving rapidly away from the realms of sociology into the mundane world of management, we can define a manager's communication models as:
verbal – the written word
oral – the spoken word
visual – the illustration, and
numerical – written – and interpreted – number; and now
electronic – using a computer.
Further, within the above categories, there are the receivers of the messages. For every writer, there must be a reader, for every speaker a listener, and for every artist a viewer. Communication in numbers is perhaps new to some, but to the managers with a feel for mathematics, numbers too can be easily read and interpreted.
We have explained that a communication is not made until it is received and understood. The prime essential in any form of communication is therefore to know the audience. It is important also to accept the concept that people tend to receive – to hear, to read, to see – very largely only what they want to receive. They seek out what is expected and what is familiar while trying to ignore or reject what is new. Every communication should be made with that thought in mind. The answer is, of course, to ensure that every message is clear, simple and – as far as possible – unambiguous. However, no matter how much the sender of the message may try, the taking of that message depends on the past experience (the training) of the recipient. This characteristic can also be partially allowed for in the communication process – by departing from the well known and moving in short, simple steps towards the really new.
8 Throughout the previous paragraph there is an implied message that is too often ignored and is worth emphasizing. This is that for any communication to be worth while, it must have a purpose – and that purpose is always persuasion. This is not to say that there are no purposeless communications: there are too many, but they are usually of little value to anyone. Every genuine communication seeks to influence the recipient. It may seek to persuade him to take some course of action, to make a decision one way or another, or merely to apply his mind to accepting more information. If we think about persuasion it is clear that we are most likely to succeed if acceptance of the persuasion is made easy.
9 We have therefore identified the fundamental principle of communication as: transmit all communications in the manner best suited to the recipient's understanding. This rather ponderous phrase could itself be better communicated as: write (or speak) clearly and simply so that the reader (or listener) can easily understand.
Table 1.1.