Dynamic Communications and Transformation
I was asked to participate in an Innovation management survey the other day regarding the question of Transformation and how well companies handle this very important condition. I call it a “condition”, because transforming the way a company thinks (which by extension means transforming peoples mindsets) is a very difficult task that I have had some experience with.
Someone once said that 80% of the World’s problems are caused by miscommunications. I believe this to be true. We humans are very imperfect when it comes to processing information. We need to synthesize and we need to have artificial constructs in order to make sense of things. Add to that cultural differences and we really are in difficult territory interpreting things. This leads to massive “lost in translation” issues.
One of my deep insights in working in Innovation environments is that communications plays a massive role. How one communicates internally with colleagues differs extensively from how one communicates to those immediately outside one’s group but that you depend on to get things done (I call these Innovation touch points). How you communicate to the next internal corporate layer, also differs. How you communicate to your partners and how you communicate to the market at large differs as well.
You get the point; communications is highly relevant and must be dynamic, fresh and prescient. I have lots of lessons learned here that would exhaust the size of this blog, but I will throw a couple of concepts and practices that I have recommended and adopted internally. The first is simply this: repetition.
There is the old saying that repetition is the mother of learning; well, my dear beloved audience, this is absolutely true. We have seen immense positive results from applying this very easy concept (more difficult to execute of course). One example here is training. Training is communicating new concepts, isn’t it? (the training ethos - and in general our teaching ethos- has been corrupted and accelerated by “death by PowerPoint” and static teaching mechanisms that convey information but don’t really “teach.”)
In keeping with the repetition recommendation, here is on practice that pays dividends. Don’t hold one big training session, but multiple smaller ones that are more tightly integrated with smaller groups of like-minded individuals intended to isolate the naysayer’s and enhance the learning energy of those in the audience.
Someone once said that 80% of the World’s problems are caused by miscommunications. I believe this to be true. We humans are very imperfect when it comes to processing information. We need to synthesize and we need to have artificial constructs in order to make sense of things. Add to that cultural differences and we really are in difficult territory interpreting things. This leads to massive “lost in translation” issues.
One of my deep insights in working in Innovation environments is that communications plays a massive role. How one communicates internally with colleagues differs extensively from how one communicates to those immediately outside one’s group but that you depend on to get things done (I call these Innovation touch points). How you communicate to the next internal corporate layer, also differs. How you communicate to your partners and how you communicate to the market at large differs as well.
You get the point; communications is highly relevant and must be dynamic, fresh and prescient. I have lots of lessons learned here that would exhaust the size of this blog, but I will throw a couple of concepts and practices that I have recommended and adopted internally. The first is simply this: repetition.
There is the old saying that repetition is the mother of learning; well, my dear beloved audience, this is absolutely true. We have seen immense positive results from applying this very easy concept (more difficult to execute of course). One example here is training. Training is communicating new concepts, isn’t it? (the training ethos - and in general our teaching ethos- has been corrupted and accelerated by “death by PowerPoint” and static teaching mechanisms that convey information but don’t really “teach.”)
In keeping with the repetition recommendation, here is on practice that pays dividends. Don’t hold one big training session, but multiple smaller ones that are more tightly integrated with smaller groups of like-minded individuals intended to isolate the naysayer’s and enhance the learning energy of those in the audience.
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Ira Koretsky
The Chief Storyteller
www.thechiefstoryteller.com