“How was your meeting?”
“Oh you know, no-one talks, then people talk for too long and nothing gets done.”
What is it about companies that communication is the number one issue which is brought up as an insider joke time and time again.
I had an onsite with client and another vendor yesterday and the client started the meeting saying that we should all try to communicate better. I felt like we were in school.
Which brings me this. How is it that companies are so badly designed and run that the number one key to success is the number one factor that’s missing.
Why don’t people communicate around here?
Is it because people don’t love their work, is it that they have no say in running the company and benefitting from its success? There is a fundamental floor in the design and I think we should interrogate this.
What defines a company that has good communication. I asked the same colleague.
“We had lots of meetings.”
“But just talking doesn’t mean there is any communication.”
“We had stand-ups all the time, we could argue points, so you could disuss things there and then instead of someone seeing the project in a completely different way and then your project delivery is a year overdue.”
Ah. Transparency, open discussion, no silos.
Which means traditional companies operate in secrecy. Wherever your desk is is what you are exposed to and even then closed door discussions are held often and daily.
Without a broad view, without feeling like you are involved in something that is bigger than yourself you will not put in the effort as you are excluded from the reward, which includes basic participation.
I sit in an open plan office, but I might as well be sitting in a room on my own with the music turned off.
It’s 2018. The birth of the age of AI. And work doesn’t work. It’s a stock image. A facsimile. And it needs to change.
sanemad 