Communication is key towards the success of any organization venture or project that requires a team or multiple teams. However, getting communication ‘right’ can be extreamly difficult and it has lead to the downfall of many large organizations. An article in the Harvard Business Review called The Silent Killer of Big Companies identifies five large organizations in five different industries that failed because of ineffective communication. For example, the article uses Nokia to show how their downfall in the phone industry was mainly caused because communications of ideas was restricted by management meaning new ideas such as the development of the smartphone were left in imagination and never made into tangible ideas.

The article explains that the downfall of Nokia and the other five companies were not because they had ineffective financial management or product management or operational management nor marketing management but because the leaders of Nokia failed to embrace new ideas and shut of any communication and dialogue concerning new ideas. This relates to selective perception as the leaders were only hearing ideas that catered for their needs and ideas.

Additionally, a major problem that lead to ineffective communication within these five companies were that their direction of communication was downward meaning that ideas from the boss and executives would flow down the chain of command in the company. However, a company like Apple who uses a upward direction of communication in that the leaders allow the flow of ideas to also come from their employees made the idea of a smartphone into reality.

The article goes on to make a point that leaders that effectively manage the flow of ideas build communications methods to build trust in their employees through promoting dialogue instead of  monologue. The leaders who best do this is by building their communication through the values of the company and they align their communication with the organizations strategy.

In my opinion, I think there are multiple layers in effective communication and its not just on building communication channels that allow for dialogue. Building of trust is the most important aspect of effective communication. Building transparency through a value driven approach will automatically make employees and co workers feel like they can implement and share ideas and that the rest of the organization will respect their ideas. An example of this is allowing a mid level employee to head a branch that is in his neighborhood as he has extensive understanding of the behaviour of that area rather then giving it to a senior level job. The management should trust that he or she can effectively run the branch but that only comes when the organization is driven by values and the senior management understand the reasoning of using the mid level employee as they understand the common goal of the organization. In my opinion companies where leadership work on building norms and practices that adhere to their values and use that as the framework to build a communication strategy are the ones that build trust and allow for the effective flow of ideas and information.

Article Link: – https://hbr.org/2012/10/the-silent-killer-of-big-companies

Picture Link: – http://aib.edu.au/blog/5-steps-towards-effective-communication/