Tuesday, May 27, 2008

"Can We Talk?"

The central nervous system of any organization--whether it be a church, a small business, a non-profit grassroots community group or a multinational corporation--is communication. The thing about communication--which I define as the sharing of information from one or more persons to one or more other persons always occurs. Even if an organization has no formal means of communicating, it will happen--spontaneously. It is well-known that in the Hanoi Hilton in North Vietnam during the war in Southeast Asia that the prisoners of war there were not allowed to talk to one another. However, it is also well-known that those prisoners invented ways to "talk" to one another, one of which was by tapping on walls. Ex-POW Wayne Ogden Smith said, "It was a 24-hour-a-day exercise. We tapped a huge amount of knowledge through those walls. The key was, we wanted to make sure that we ... leaned on each other and kept our spirits up. We wanted to make sure that we were positive. Your well-being was the first order of business."

Communication is absolutely essential to humanity. In the movie Cast Away, the main character Chuck Noland, played by Tom Hanks, was stranded alone on a desert island (an updated Robinson Crusoe) in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. His only companion was a volleyball that washed up on shore which he named Wilson after the manufacturer. Chuck spoke often to "Wilson" and even yelled at "him." So strong is the need for communication, the movie seems to be saying, that a person will talk to even an inanimate object.

When a leader fails to communicate appropriate content clearly, consistently, and concisely then his followers will communicate with one another in the absence of knowledge--which we often call rumor. The rumor mill gets going because official communication channels are obstructed.

Communication is the real work of leadership
. Often leaders underestimate the power and necessity of communication. I learned this lesson in my first job out of college. I was working for Visa International (yes, the credit card company) in Baltimore, Maryland as a quality analyst in their Emergency Card Services Center. We were told by senior management that a new performance appraisal system was going to be instituted. That was mediocre communication. But it got worse. Not much communication occurred after that so in the absence of official communication the rumor mill started humming. There was talk that pay was going to be slashed by up to 25% and there was talk that everyone was going to get up to a 25% pay raise. Other rumors started that claimed pay was going to be tied performance--which was partially true--so an employee's pay could go up (or down) by several percentage points each year--which was untrue. The performance appraisal system that was eventually rolled-out was not much different than what was already in place. Some employees got small pay raises and some (including me) had a small drop in pay due to the fact that our skill set did not match the job duties. Needless to say I did not stay with Visa for very long after this.

The Visa management problem was that they did not keep the employees informed during the development of the performance appraisal system. Even at that early stage of my leadership development I knew intuitively that one vitally important aspect of leadership is communication. Leaders must be transparent in communication to the greatest extent practicable.

Currently I am experiencing this same problem in two very different settings. One is in my church denomination and the other is in my place of employment. While I will try to convey the essence of the issues, I will leave out specific names of people, places, and organizations.

First, my church denomination. The leadership of my denomination decided to sell a piece of real estate that has been in the hands of the denomination for over 160 years--since the denomination's initial organization in the 1840's. The property and its buildings have become increasingly expensive to maintain and donated funds for the upkeep have been dwindling for years. Many other issues have also contributed to the demise of the property including inept business management. As a result the denomination has had to utilize funds from other sources to keep up the property and its buildings. This application of funds while not unethical (the funds come from a general account) constitutes the metaphor "robbing Peter to pay Paul."

As you can expect, there have been many accusations, counter-accusations, calls for resignations, authoritative decrees, erosion of trust, etc. The environment has been heated to say the least. However, if, as John Maxwell (who interestingly enough is a former church leader) says, "everything rises and falls on leadership" then the responsibility for this current crisis is laid squarely at the feet of the denominational leadership. Regardless of how the situation developed or the subsequent actions of the people, the leadership takes the blame (or credit) for the status of things.

One major failure point of the denominational leadership is their mismanagement of communication. The real estate problem itself was never clearly, consistently, nor concisely communicated to the people. Then when the only alternative was to sell the property the leadership did not engage the people, build consensus, nor listen to the concerns of those who opposed to selling the property. All of this is part of communication.

The second example is my place of employment. I have previously blogged about the project of which I am currently a part. Whereas my church denominational leadership has mismanaged communication with the people, the project leadership at my place of employment has intentionally kept communication to a minimum. In one instance the project manager was not invited to a meeting between the project sponsor and the project technical leader. There have been many other instances where project team members have been left "out of the loop" by project leadership. Well, as a result there is little trust between the different project teams, the environment is politically charged and the rumor mill is functioning at full capacity.

As I stated at the beginning of this post, communication is the central nervous system of every organization. In the human body the central nervous system carries messages from the brain to all the various parts of the body just as the various parts of the body send messages to the brain. Each talks to and listens to the other. The parts of the body listen to the messages the brain sends, such as "raise right arm." At the same time, the parts of the body send messages back to the brain that the brain listens to, such as the hand telling the brain, "the stove burner is hot" or the foot telling the brain, "the floor is wet." In order for the body to function normally, the brain must communicate clearly, consistently and concisely with the parts of the body and the body must do the same with the brain. Why do we think organizations would be any different?

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