We’d better wake up to the high cost of poor communication

Contrary to popular belief, communication is not some warm and fuzzy nice to have. Communication is nothing less than the lifeblood of your organization. If blood doesn’t circulate at just the right pressure and speed to all parts and extremities of the body, that body will sicken and eventually die. Similarly, if communication doesn’t flow freely throughout an organization, that body too will sicken and eventually die.

By communication, I don’t mean just vision and mission statements from the top; I don’t mean news releases publicizing financial results or new product announcements; I don’t mean internal or client newsletters, annual reports or videotaped messages to the troops. These are all important and have their place, but they form just a fraction of the communicationand miscommunicationthat takes place every day in the workplace.

Contrary to popular belief, communication is not some warm and fuzzy nice to have. Communication is nothing less than the lifeblood of your organization. If blood doesn’t circulate at just the right pressure and speed to all parts and extremities of the body, that body will sicken and eventually die. Similarly, if communication doesn’t flow freely throughout an organization, that body too will sicken and eventually die.

By communication, I don’t mean just vision and mission statements from the top; I don’t mean news releases publicizing financial results or new product announcements; I don’t mean internal or client newsletters, annual reports or videotaped messages to the troops. These are all important and have their place, but they form just a fraction of the communicationand miscommunicationthat takes place every day in the workplace.

Nothing happens without communication. It takes interaction between people to create a product. It takes collaboration to approach a new market. It takes teamwork to implement a strategy. It takes exchange of written and spoken words to oil and run the machinery of business. And if that machine breaks downas it often doesmoney is lost. Real, hard dollars.

Poor communication costs money in three areas:

Loss of time

Loss of business

Loss of people

Loss of Time

What is a meeting? It’s an exercise in applied communication. We talk, we listen, we discuss, we argue.

I’ve rarely met anyone in business who hasn’t complained about meetings: too many, too long, too boring. I’d add to that: too expensive by far. Meetings are called for the wrong reasons; they are called by people who don’t know how to conduct them, who let discussions go off track and forget any objective that may have existed for the meeting; the wrong people are invited; they go on far too long and often reach no useful conclusion.

If we total the cost of people’s time preparing for, attending and doing the resulting after-work, as well as materials, all that coffee and donuts and other incidentals, meetings cost business millions of dollars every year. Can we eliminate meetings? No. But if we stop to count the cost, perhaps we’ll look for ways to make them more effective.

How many executive hours are spent listening to others make presentations? How many of those presentations actually provide any more insight than a printed report? Add up the time spent creating the presentations, the materials, and most of all the expensive time of the listenersand again the cost is staggering. If people are required to make presentations, they should be educated in their purpose and trained in their execution, because otherwise they are just too expensive.

Loss of Business

Sales and customer service are two sides of the same coin: applied communication with those who are the source of a company’s revenue. Miscommunication in either case costs money.

Ideally, the sales process is a conversation. As the salesperson, you ask questions to find out the potential client’s needs; if your product or service fill those needs, you present it in such as way as to make the connection clear; further exploration takes place and eventually, the customer decides to buy. Effective communication here results in revenue, while ineffective communication does not. Lost sales mean lost money.

Customer service is often treated as a separate discipline in business, with the unfortunate result that other employees believe they are off the hook, and technology has only made matters worse. Evidence of this can be readily foundjust call any high tech company and try to get help installing or using any so-called user-friendly technology.

Customers will put up with only so many of these experiences before

What are the results of communication breakdown? Here are just a few examples: long, boring, unproductive meetings that reach no conclusion and serve no purpose; sales presentations that show no concern for, or understanding of, the client’s needs; badly written e-mail messages that cause misunderstandings, ill will and wasted time; employee alienation caused by managers who don’t listen; lack of understanding between people of different age groups and between male and female employees. That’s just a small sample.

Poor communication costs business millions of dollars every single day. These costs are hidden, because there isn’t a line on the balance sheet to account for poor communication. Nothing shows up in the accounts saying, lost productivity due to miserable meetings or missed business opportunity through sad selling skills. The cost is nonetheless real. Find a way to take just a portion of that money back, and you’ve found The Hidden Profit Center.