How does insufficient communication impact a transformation initiative?
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Senior Executive Advisor in Software2 years ago
A business transformation is a complex and challenging endeavor with many moving parts. They require a lot of coordination and orchestration between multiple teams to ensure that the improved products or processes converge to value streams that drive identified business outcomes. That’s why it’s imperative to have a consistent, succinct and powerful purpose when communicating key milestones and achievements to the organization. It helps to communicate via several channels as the repetition will reduce distortion of the messaging.Chief Technology Officer in Education2 years ago
Communication and planning go hand in hand. One must plan TO communicate, and plan THE communication. Working backwards from the end goal helps to focus both the roadmap to project completion as well as the communication steps needed along the way. Insufficient communication can easily torpedo a great initiative because it can cause individuals to be confused and lose faith in the initiative and the leaders in charge. We have to lead from our lowest common denominator in such cases, ensuring that things are succinctly and fully communicated.C-PIO in Software2 years ago
Communication is key to the success of any task. As a company grows its communication must meet the challenge. Nothing will happen if it is not communicated. Transformation cannot occur if those taking part do not understand what is needed. This is a two-way affair. A top-down idea has to be fully communicated to those involved and there needs to be a verification that what is expected is understood. Only with two-way communication will initiatives succeed. CIO in Government2 years ago
I am not a fan of the term, insufficient communication. I have seen it used so many times as an excuse for poor behaviour from leaders. Communication has become synonymous with a one-way activity, transformation initiative communicating to staff. I think a better term would be engagement. Engagement implies a two-way activity and an expectation for everyone to be active in the transformation.The reason I say that is because often what is described as insufficient communication are actually pre-existing cultural issues, where communication is being used as an excuse. Its easy like that because it's hard to measure the effectiveness of communication, so how can you determine if it was insufficient or poor engagement.
To go back to the question. Transformation implies a cultural shift, requiring greater engagement from staff. Failure to gain that engagement undermines the transformation. Once that occurs the initiative becomes a technology project as funding and time tick on. The strategy shifts from delivering transformation to delivering a solution. The transformation phase then gets shifted to BAU, with no support or funding to accomplish it.
Director of IT in Manufacturing2 years ago
Lack of communication in a transformation initiative creates a situation where individuals simply will not contribute to their potential and the results will be flawed accordingly. Lack of communication also contributes to wasted effort, extra work for some people, inferior results, and alienation of stakeholders.