Have you ever seen an email trail get longer and more heated over the course of a few days, only to be resolved in the first 10 minutes of an in-person meeting? Or maybe a misunderstanding from an email or instant message turned into misalignment and tangents of fruitless work? Or perhaps a text from your boss seemed condescending or rude, making you self-conscious and causing your relationship to become a bit more formal and awkward?

Digital communication has revolutionised the way the business world operates and has unlocked countless efficiencies, opportunities, and even new industries. But if any of the above scenarios sounds familiar, you’ve seen the negative impact that can come from leaning on digital and text communication channels over richer forms of communication.

Organisations are made of human beings and the relationships between them. Like modern-day tribes, the way organisations take action is by aligning and mobilising human beings, but unlike our tribal ancestors who were constantly together conveying messages with face-to-face interactions, colourful expressions and body language waving their clubs around, in the modern age we often strip back our communication to letters on a screen that are open to the receiver’s interpretation.

 In today’s dynamic business world effective communication is the cornerstone of a successful organization. While digital communication has become the norm, there is immense value in favouring richer forms of interaction, such as a stronger culture, higher employee engagement, more effective communication, and ultimately the ability to deliver more value, more efficiently.

To unlock this value we recommend taking a philosophy of “walk, talk, write” - meaning if you have a significant message for someone, walk over and talk to them if you can, if not pick up the phone and call them, and use text-based communication only as a last resort.

 

effective-communication-tips

 

Walk

The most effective way to communicate with someone is to be face to face with them in person - this is the original form of communication that our bodies and minds are designed for! You are able to see body language and facial expressions, hear tone of voice, and feel the presence of one another. There are even many studies showing that humans use olfactory communication, meaning that we receive subliminal messages from one another through smells!

When it comes to building trust, resolving conflicts, and fostering meaningful connections, face-to-face communication is unparalleled. Whenever possible, take the opportunity to walk over and talk to the person directly. Face-to-face interactions allow for immediate feedback, non-verbal cues, and a deeper understanding of the message being conveyed. This form of communication builds rapport, strengthens relationships, and promotes a sense of unity within the organization.

 

Talk

The modern day workplace has changed over the past few decades and it may not always be possible to walk over and speak to someone. In situations where face-to-face communication is not feasible, the next best option is to either use a video calling software or to pick up the phone and call them. 

Video calls provide the extra advantage of being able to see facial expressions and some body language to pick up non-verbal cues, but both forms of communication enable real-time conversations, tone of voice interpretation, and a more personal connection. Phone or video calls allow for immediate clarification, active listening, and the ability to address complex matters efficiently. By prioritizing these methods, organizations can foster meaningful dialogue and maintain a human touch in their interactions.

 

Write

While text-based communication such as instant messaging or email offers convenience and speed, it should be used sparingly. Text-based exchanges lack the richness of face-to-face or voice-based communication, often leading to misinterpretations and misunderstandings which can cause inefficiencies or even damage relationships. A good rule of thumb to follow is if you’re on the second or third paragraph of an email to someone, just walk over to them or pick up the phone!

However, there are situations where written communication is necessary, such as sharing information or documenting agreements. In such cases, it is important to be clear, concise, and considerate in your written messages to minimize any potential confusion.

 

Organisational Impact

Using this walk, talk, write approach can help an individual ensure that messages are received correctly and aid in building connections and positive relationships, but the most value comes from an entire organisation harnessing this approach. 

To encourage richer forms of communication, organisations should foster a communication culture that values personal connections and meaningful interactions over transactional text. This can be achieved by promoting open communication channels, encouraging face-to-face interactions, providing opportunities for in person collaboration such as big room planning events or hackathons, and organising teams to be cross-functional to enrich inter-departmental communication. By creating an environment that values direct communication, organizations can enhance teamwork, trust, and overall efficiency.

 


 

In the era of digital communication, it is crucial for organisations to recognise the value of richer forms of interaction. As many organisations are losing efficiency from the misalignment, confusion, and weakened relationships that can be fuelled by ineffective communication channels, modern organisations can gain a competitive advantage by fostering a culture which prioritises richer interactions.

So next time your email starts to look like “War and Peace,” just walk across the office to talk to that person or pick up the phone and call them. Or better yet, if your team has started working from home most of the time and you are seeing some friction between team members, identify a day or two per week when everyone agrees to come into the office to have team meetings and collaboration sessions.

Organisations are made of people and interactions and if each person prioritises richer communication channels, the whole system works better.

 

 

Transparency is critical for agility, but often the power of transparency is challenged by long-hold cultural norms. This article shares examples of the power of transparency and how it can be used to create breakthroughs in performance.

Situation

I was helping an organisation adopt agile ways of working across six teams. We had started well. We had a shared vision for the change and everyone felt excited. We held a series of workshops to upskill everyone and had kicked off strongly.

The teams were full of highly skilled people who knew each other well and had worked together for years. They had been granted plenty of autonomy, were all highly committed and knew the area they were working in very well.

As we progressed, I kept getting a feeling that something wasn’t right. I drive home each day feeling something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. I didn’t know the area of the business nearly as well as they did, but my gut feeling was that they should be getting through much more work than they were.

While reflecting on this I suddenly realised what I needed – transparency. Without transparency, I didn’t really know what is going on.

Creating Transparency

I decided to set up a small experiment. The CEO had made it clear that this project was the number one priority of the entire company, therefore all people working on this were dedicated to it full-time. I decided to test this.

Rather than dig into the details of what everyone was working on (micro-management), I asked them to help me create transparency about where their time was being spent. To do this, I set up a simple board where each day (at our Daily Scrum) each person recorded a green tick if they were doing the 7 hours they were supposed to, or a red cross if it was less than this.

What I saw shocked me. Everyone was red crosses!

As we worked through this, we found something significant - most people were only spending one hour a day on the project.

Despite this being the most important project of the organisation, structured to deliver the most important work first in iterations, the teams were actually working on all sorts of other things!

I remained curious and asked lots of questions. One team member shared an email that read something like this:

No transparencyIt turned out this was happening everywhere. There were literally thousands of invisible undercurrents running all the way through the organisation based on whatever work well-meaning managers were trying to get done. They had no transparency of what was actually going on.

Using The Power of Transparency

This organisation had a hierarchical culture, where success was measured by people doing what managers asked them to do. Well-meaning managers were trying to get their accountabilities delivered, but were creating a nightmare of bottlenecks, delays and dependencies across teams.

I bought the discovery to the Product Owner, who was also a senior manager with a lot of influence in the organisation. He too was shocked yet also thrilled with what we had discovered.

We designed an all-hands meeting where we shared the problem. He then empowered all the teams by asking them to say no to any work that wasn’t part of their current Sprint or was a genuine emergency that had been agreed by the Product Owner. All other incoming work to go to the relevant Product Owners to be ordered on their respective Product Backlogs.

The next Sprint productivity went through the roof. Teams were much more focused and happier. They started delivering significantly better-quality outcomes more frequently.

Winning with transparency

Breaking difficult habits

Six weeks later we hit another brick wall.

The Teams were struggling to manage the volume of support work coming through. It was impacting their ability to focus on project work. They raised it as something they needed our help with to resolve.

We asked them to estimate how much of their time was being spent on support work. They calculated 25%. When then asked them to calculate their per-Sprint capacity. As an example, one team had 8 people, each dedicated 7 hours a day over the 10-day Sprint. Therefore, their capacity was 8 x 7 x 10 = 560 hours. If 25% of their time was being spent on support work, then this was approximately 140 hours. Each team then set aside this amount of time for unpredictable incoming support work.

But to ensure we maintained transparency, we tracked how we were using this time. We created a large public whiteboard where we tracked how much of this time was being used, day by day.

What we discovered shocked us again.

After one week (half the Sprint), they had used all of their support allocation! The amount of support work was significantly more than what they had estimated.

Together, we analysed the incoming support work. It turned out that only a fraction of it was genuine support work. The rest was coming from the same managers as before, who were now gaming the system by putting through their work requests as “support work”. We still had the same problem – just in a different format.

Brick wall

Solution: Increasing the Power of Transparency

To resolve this once and for all, we made a decision to make all incoming support work transparent by putting it on the wall. Each day at our Daily Scrum, the teams and Product Owners agreed how much support work versus how much project work they would do each day.

Productivity shot up again.

We then kicked off a broader piece of work to address the root cause of the problem – the portfolio of work the company was trying to get done. We created an organised, structured and transparent portfolio system where all project were prioritised based on the capacity of the available teams. With all the managers involved aligned, everyone could to get their work done and be successful.

Conclusion

Transparency is your friend. It is easy to blame people when we are getting results we don’t expect, but it is usually the system of work that is the root cause. People don’t want to fail.

Leadership is about creating clarity and an environment where people can be successful and high-performing teams can emerge. As leaders, transparency is an important way of achieving this. Without it, it is difficult to know what is truly going on.

I encourage you to consider how your organisation uses the power of transparency. What could you do to improve it?