The Management Bible

Chapter 11. Improving Communication

IT'S A NEW WORLD OUT THERE ...

Communication and ...

• How good communication makes organizations work better.

• How to become a better listener.

• Learning how to make great presentations.

• The power of the written word.

• Keeping up with technology.

COMMUNICATION MAKES ORGANIZATIONS WORK

Think about it for a minute: What would your organization be like without communication? Our guess is that it would be a very lonely place. Not only could teams not coordinate their efforts and individuals seek feedback from and communicate their successes to their managers, but also customers would have a pretty tough time placing orders, products would have a pretty tough time being produced, and services would have a pretty tough time being delivered. If you couldn't communicate with coworkers, team members, customers, suppliers, and others with whom you routinely do business, you really wouldn't have an organization at all.

In short, organizations are built on a foundation of communication; communication is the physical and mental network that ties everyone—both within and without the organization—together. It's the oil that keeps the organization running smoothly.

But, while communication is simple when an organization has only one or two people in it, the complexity of communication grows in direct proportion to the size of the organization. In larger organizations, communication occurs less in face-to-face encounters than in increasingly impersonal ways such as voice mail ...