Why does communication fail

Understanding the responsibilities of each participant can help us understand the causes of communication failure and how to prevent it. What may be obvious to you may not be obvious to your audience. Skipping over key details because they are obvious to you can leave your audience bewildered and frustrated. It is often difficult to know what knowledge an audience or individual brings into a conversation, so it is incumbent on the speaker to give a thorough explanation while looking for clues of confusion in the audience.

In addition, being able to fully understand and address questions is vital. Listening to the question and understanding where the confusion lies is an important skill that many people do not possess.

Three months later in December, the company then announced that there was another breach from that affected one billion accounts. Nearly a year later, in October , Yahoo announced that, in fact, the data breach affected all 3 billion of its customers. Not communicating.

It turned out that company insiders actually knew about the breach when it happened years earlier but kept it under wraps. Not only was this extremely poor business communication, but poor risk management. Running a company means running a gauntlet of risks. Companies need to have a risk management framework in place to prepare for any number of threats. Data breaches happen every 39 seconds. They are a risk a tech company like Yahoo was aware of and should have been prepared for.

Not every business communication failure turns into a scandal. Sometimes they turn into great PR opportunities. Its loyal customers were thrown into a frenzy, upset that their favorite pancake place was changing.

IHOP took the communication failure and ran with it, using humor to address the ensuing chaos. What could have put the company in the spotlight for the first time in decades, attracted new customers, and quadrupled burger sales? IHOP took hold of the communication and flipped the narrative, made it fun, and, most importantly, reassured customers that it was still the same brand they had grown to love.

Business communication failures can lead to a serious PR crisis for any company. It may sound hard to believe, but Microsoft introduced PowerPoint to Office users 25 years ago, and the World Wide Web was created just one year later. So you've drafted a report that should be ready for design by the end of the week. You email it to all the key stakeholders plus a few others whose input you need. One by one, you start receiving the feedback. Some of the feedback is spread across different versions of your shared document.

Some of it within the email thread. One person comes up to you in the office and tells you what they would like to see changed.

You begin to receive some more feedback via IM and phone calls. The end of the week approaches, and instead of sending your report to design, you're organizing your feedback. Sound familiar? With so many different communication types and means of communication, it can be a full-time job just organizing the feedback, incorporating everyone's thoughts and ideas.

It's nearly impossible to get concise and actionable feedback from stakeholders without a single place to house all feedback for a particular project. Try this: Invest in remote team communication tools that allow you to funnel all communication relevant to a specific project in a single, accessible location.

This single source of truth will be a saving grace when it comes to gathering and implementing ideas and feedback. In the end, it will save you a ton of time previously spent organizing and piecing it all together.

Keep all your communications in one place. Second, make it a rule that when people are talking face to face, they are not allowed to check their Blackberry or email. It is rude and shuts down effective communication. One client of mine insists that during a training program, team members must put their smartphones in bags with their names on them.

They are only allowed to look at them on breaks. So as CCO, you have your marching orders. Pop me an email, and let me know how it is going. On the other hand, just call me! Business Training Works. Call: Email: [email protected].

Free Resources. Explore Our Articles, Tips, and Guides. Information at Your Fingertips. Here are steps you should take in the first 30 days of your new role: Communication Strategy I recently had a client tell me she was on a conference call for four hours.

Have Team Meetings Again Many people tell me they used to have team meetings but stopped having them for a host of reasons.