Improving Communication Improves Your Bottom Line

 IMPROVING COMMUNICATION IMPROVES YOUR BOTTOM LINE

We’ve all been there.  We find out a piece of information from our work, or inner circle, and wonder why no one told us.  We think, what terrible communication!  When you are in a leadership position, as a manager or CEO of your company, communication is critical to keeping your business in flow and ensure the lack of communication doesn’t negatively impact your bottom line. 

A Failure to Share Information

Communication breakdowns occur when the person with the information fails to share it.  As obvious as this sounds, it nonetheless happens all-the-time.  And the burden isn’t on the people who need to know, the burden is on the person with the information who needs to share it.  This also sounds obvious, but yet so many businesses still find themselves in a communication void.

So what strategies can you implement in your business today to ensure communication shortfalls don’t have a negative impact on your business. 

An Alienated Team

When you fail to communicate important information to those who support you, whether contract help or employees, you disenfranchise your team.  While it’s possible that you are perceived only as disorganized, it’s more likely that you are sending a message that you don’t really care that much about your business or results.  And you may be sending this message even if it’s completely not the case for you and your business. While we all forget things sometimes, and everyone will understand if you forget to tell them things, a pattern of miscommunication, or lack of communication, is a different story.  

Most workers, when they realize they have not been told information that they believe is essential to their performance, will feel a range of emotions.  Initially they will probably feel excluded, and maybe a little bit hurt.  They will wonder why you didn’t share the information.  They might think that you don’t trust them with the information.  This will be especially true if some people are told key pieces of information and others are not.  They may also think that their performance and their contribution to your success doesn’t really matter to you.  The lack of information may have caused them to waste time on activities that weren’t necessary or to not complete a task in the best way possible.  This in turn creates feelings of frustration and indifference.  Your team is not going to react in this way based on one or two missed pieces of information, but over time this pattern can do real harm to your business. 

Affirmative Steps to Communicate

So we know we need to spread the news. How do we do it?  Many CEO’s of entrepreneurial companies utilize project management software that allows teams to communicate with each other, assign tasks, share project boards, etc.  These are great tools, and are a great first start in making sure important information is available. But project management software is an incomplete tool in your management arsenal.  Project management tools are a passive means of communication.  They are useful and I advocate for their use to keep your business organized and to track responsibilities.  But when it comes to communicating important information, you need to make an affirmative plan to communicate.  

Holding regular meetings with your team on a platform that allows you to see and hear everyone at the same time, is critical for effective communication.  How to structure these meetings for the best outcomes is a topic for another post.  I’m not suggesting that you should fill your schedule with meetings. There’s nothing worse than meeting fatigue, with one meeting after another when nothing gets accomplished.  Instead, be strategic about your communications and make meetings just one part of your strategy.  For example, you might keep a list of information to communicate to your team, and cover these items at a weekly staff update meeting.  Some communications may be more critical, and should be shared right away by email or other method within your project management tool.  But these items can also be included in the weekly session to cover any questions or challenges your team is experiencing.

Put Your Message in Context

Sometimes it's obvious why you are sharing information but many times it isn’t and so it’s important to put your information in context.  If you’ve hired a new member of your team, and your sharing that information, everyone understands why you are telling everyone the news.  And make sure you do share this kind of news - with celebration and excitement to welcome your new team member.  In other situations, you may need to share information that is part of an important sequence you have put together in your own mind.  Often unintentionally we work on problems and develop solutions but don’t share our process around these solutions.  When this happens, even if we communicate important information its significance may be lost because our teammates haven’t had the benefit of our internal analysis.  In these situations, set aside time with your team to share the information, your analysis in making the decision and how you see this decision impacting your business.  This last point is particularly important, because as the CEO you see your entire business, whereas members of your team often only see part of it,  By specifically identifying how changes are going to impact various operations in your company, you ensure that everyone understands how the change will impact their own positions and how the change is important to the business as a whole. 

Your Bottom Line

Failure to communicate, and failure to communicate effectively will have an impact on your bottom line.  If your team doesn’t know important information in a timely way, and doesn’t have the specific context for how this information will impact their position and their business, they may end up spending time on a project that has to be redone, or perhaps incorrectly communicates information to your customers. When your team spends time redoing things unnecessarily, this costs money and time.  Your team may also start to develop some apathy, thinking even subconsciously, that if you don’t really care to keep them informed, then perhaps they don’t really need to care. By being more intentional with how and what you share with your team, these situations can be avoided and not negatively impact your bottom line.