The big picture part 4:Communication

Our next practice area on working in complex and matrixed organizations is that of communication.

After years of hearing that communication is the solution to every problem, we have learned that communication can often be a big part of the problem rather than the solution.

Just one example – our speed survey participants tell us they get an average of 56 emails per day and that only 45% of these are necessary for them to do their jobs – this equates to about 7,000 unnecessary emails each per year. Many of our clients employ tens of thousands of people – so that is 70M unnecessary emails written, stored, sent, read and deleted every year per 10,000 employees.

And the same is true for instant messages, phone calls, web and teleconferences too. Lack of communication is really a problem of the past for many of the companies we work with.

Sometimes to be more connected is not the same as being more effective

We believe that we need to reduce the quantity and increase the quality of communication, tame the technology and make space for real human conversations rather than just distributing links to our intranet sites – and at Global Integration we have the tools to make it happen.

Have you done anything in your organization to reduce the quantity and improve the quality of communication?