[CHAPTER 1 ACHIEVING SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE

February 15, 2011 COMMUNICATION]

Effective communication benefits organizations in numerous ways:

Stronger decision making based on timely, reliable information

Faster problem solving, in which less time is spent on understanding problems and
more is spent on creating solutions
Earlier warning of potential problems, from rising business costs to critical safety
issues
Increased productivity and lower costs
Stronger business relationships
Clearer and more persuasive marketing messages
Enhanced professional images for both employees and companies
Greater employee engagement with their work, leading to higher employee
satisfaction and lower employee turnover
Better financial results and higher returns for investors

A number of forces make business communication a unique challenge:

The globalization of business and the increase in workforce diversity
The increasing value of business information
The pervasiveness of technology
The evolution of organizational structures
The growing reliance on teamwork
Knowledge workers are employees who specialise in acquiring, processing, and communicating
information.
Globalization is the increasing effort to reach across international borders in order to
Market products selling to other countries thus need to know culture and must
possess effective communication skills.
Partner with other businesses
Employ workers and executives
Workforce diversity refers to all those differences among the people you come into contact with
on the job, including differences in
Age
Gender
Sexual orientation
Education
Cultural background
Religion
Ability

[CHAPTER 1 ACHIEVING SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE

February 15, 2011 COMMUNICATION]

Life experience

Youll be expected to communicate valuable information that addresses such areas as

Competitive insights the more a company knows about its competitors and their
plans, the better able it will be to adjust its own business plans.
Customer needs most companies invest significant time and money in the effort to
understand the needs of their customers, and this information needs to be analysed
and summarised in order to develop goods and services that better satisfy customer
needs.
Regulations and guidelines business must understand and follow a range of
government regulations and guidelines such as employment, taxes, accounting etc...
Every firm has a particular structure that defines the relationships between various units in the
company, and these relationships influence the nature and quality of communication throughout
the organization.
Tall structures have many layers of management between the lowest and highest positions, so
they can suffer communication breakdowns and delays as messages are passed up and down
through multiple layers.
To overcome such problems, many businesses are adopting flat structures that reduce the number
of layers.
Flat organizational structures:
Help communication flow faster and with fewer disruptions and distortions
Require more individual responsibility for communicationparticularly in the horizontal
direction
Specific types of organization structures present unique communication challenges.
In a matrix structure, employees
Report to two managers at the same time, such as a project manager and a department
manager.
Have an increased communication burden to coordinate workloads, schedules, and other
matters
In a network structure, sometimes known as a virtual organization,
A company supplements the talents of its employees with services from one or more
external partners.

[CHAPTER 1 ACHIEVING SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE

February 15, 2011 COMMUNICATION]

Communicating across multiple boundaries requires extra planning and diligence

particularly since each company in the network might be partner in several other
networks.

Corporate culture is the mixture of values, traditions, and habits that give a company its
atmosphere and personality.
Successful companies encourage employee contributions by ensuring that communication flows
freely down, up, and across the organization chart.
An open climate encourages honesty that allows employees to
Feel free enough to admit their mistakes
Disagree with the boss
Share negative or unwelcome information
Teams offer organizations many potential advantages and require you to become more
responsible for communication