District 303 in St. Charles Illinois needs to hire a communication specialist. This is according to results of a communication audit reported in the May 29 Daily Herald Newspaper.

I’m not surprised. Communication issues seem to come up in nearly every organization or leadership assessment I perform. I can’t think of an organization where I’ve worked (as an employee or volunteer) where leadership determined that their communication didn’t need to be improved.

The general consensus often is that people need more communication and information. In some cases that is the problem. There are certainly organizations out there in which information does not readily flow.

Yet, in general, I don’t think the issue really is in the amount of communication that people receive. In the book, The Experience Economy, Joe Pines and James Gilmore make an interesting point about consumer choice; “Customers don’t want choice, they want exactly what they want.” In other words, people don’t care if you have twenty toasters to choose from, they’d be happy with just one if it happened to be what they are looking for. I think the same is true for communication, people aren’t looking for more, they just want their specific questions answered.

Unfortunately, the response to “communication issues” is often to start sending more communication rather than to better match people’s information needs with communication. It is certainly easier to send a small number of large messages out. It is “scalable” which is a popular business term. Yet, scalability doesn’t always ensure effectiveness. Often to make something scalable, you have to boil it down to its least common denominator.

An alternative to solving the communication problem is to stop thinking about communication. Instead, pay more attention to what’s on people’s minds. This is clearly not a scalable approach when looked at from a communication standpoint. However, it is very scalable when looked at from a leadership standpoint.

Good leaders should take individual responsibility to understand the needs of their customers, employees, business partners, and anyone else who is involved with the organization. Teaching leaders to be better listeners and questioners will increase their ability to deliver the specific information that people need. It might take a bit more time than blasting a generic memo from the corporate office or from the President of the organization but it will improve “communication”. It will also improve relationships.

People are bombarded with information and messages. They don’t want more. They actually want less – they want to know what they need to know.

Tips for improving communication

Talk with people – Don’t use polls or the opinions of others to determine what people need. Talk with them directly.

Listen – Forget about what you want to say and focus on what others want to hear.

Use user-centric communication assessment and planning tools – These tools focus on answering questions such as “what do my users already know”, “what do they agree with”, “what do they disagree with”, “what is confusing”, “what else do they need to know”, etc.

Segment based on context and information needs rather than demographics – People within the same demographic group can have vastly different information needs. Some people are more familiar with what you are doing, some are supportive, some are rebelling. Base your messages on what they need rather than what category they fit within.

Make understanding and communicating everybody’s job – Don’t make it a top down activity. Everybody has a role in helping to
improve communication within an organization.