The Cost of Poor Business Communication
| by Sandi Villarreal | ||||
There is “effective” communication—the kind that happens when one person says something and the other person understands and acts accordingly. Then there’s just talking and talking and never getting your point across, resulting in discontented colleagues and lack of project realization. There’s also talking and talking until your point changes completely, resulting in utter confusion and rework. The latter two equal waste (i.e., lost time and money). And I bet you can probably name one or two people in the office who fall glaringly into each category. But what about you?
Image by Smile My Day
Do you have clear communication channels with your employees? Your suppliers? How about your customers? You may be tempted to say yes, but when was the last time a project went over budget, or the paper company shipped you the wrong stock, or—hello—you processed a returned order? Look in the mirror, buddy, because clearly, you had a communication breakdown. I’m not saying it’s always on your end, but if there’s a pattern of these breakdowns, there’s also a common denominator.
It’s easy to “correct” these breakdowns. Discuss your employees’ lack of time management skills. Return the shipment of paper. Refund the customer’s money. Easy, right? But that doesn’t solve the problem. Those are simple corrections. Corrective actions—or digging to find the root cause of problems and then correcting them—are the right avenue (nice blog post on understanding root cause). But then you have to actually communicate the results to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
It’s all about communication, both internally to your employees, and externally to your customers and suppliers. Your system should reflect that.
What are your ideas for increasing the effectiveness of business communication? I’d love to hear your stories.
Categories:
Customer Quality • Sales and Marketing
Tags:
communication breakdown • effective communication • internal communication
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Originally published in 2009 by Bizmanualz, Inc. under the title The Cost of Poor Business Communication. All rights reserved. Reproduction permitted with attribution only. www.bizmanualz.com
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