Why less communication is better!

You are probably thinking that I sound kind of crazy right now, when I say that communicating less is better. However, when I interview people as part of the process to identify an organization’s pain points, I always ask people whether they believe communication in the organization is good. Almost everyone invariably answers yes, explaining they frequently communicate with colleagues and counterparts at vendors or with customers. They also say that they receive too many emails, are interrupted too often and may struggle to find critical information quickly. I am not sure if you get the same impression, but these two should be mutually exclusive.

When I see this, my determination is that there is poor communication; or really that the business is poorly organized business. This is a symptom of a lack of a deliberate way to collaborate and organize information.

Thus, I would argue that organizations with the best communication are those who communicate the least often.

Again, you might think this sounds crazy, but really think about it for a moment. Try to dig into the motivation for a communication event:

• Why did someone send you this communication, or why did you send it?
• What are you looking to achieve?

I would venture a guess that in many cases you are looking for some kind of information. Maybe it is an approval. Maybe you need someone to help you find a file or possibly review and revise a document. While more complex requests may be necessary, many of the communication events that occur are due to the failure to make information readily available and easily findable. The result, you need to ask someone for it. This takes the time of multiple people when it should not be happening. In addition, there is likely going to be a delay before a response and a resolution. Multiply these events out exponentially, and you have an environment rife with waste.

Imagine how many fewer distractions you would have during your workday if these interruptions did not happen. Would you be able to leave earlier? Would you be able to complete tasks faster? Would the quality of your work increase? Would you be more focused on the task at hand?

I would venture to guess that the answer to all of these questions is a resounding YES!!!

If you want to get some more insight into the source of many frustrations, take a look at the list below where I have put together a few other symptoms of poor organization:

1. Frequent urgent items
2. A high volume of email people are copied on, but do not need to read
3. Frequently needing to ask people for status updates
4. Spending large amount of time looking for documents
5. Frequently asking people where they keep documents
6. Difficulty identifying the latest version of a document. Versionitis is a chronic condition suffered by many people.
7. Work falling through the cracks
8. Customers calling your office asking why their service request was not followed up on and no one having any record of it
9. Vendors calling your office looking for payment status information, and multiple people needing to collaborate to provide them with an answer
10. A lot of time spent figuring out what everyone should work on during a particular day