This is a document in development. It is both incomplete and subject to major revision. Though presently written in first person, there are contributions from many in these words. None, more so than Cecelia DeLuca.
Communications and Continuity
Introduction
I have managed organizations, and I have been advised by external review panels. I have served on external review panels. In every case, the challenges of communication were present and noted. Communication is essential to collaborative problem solving. Collaborative problem solving is required when many people representing many fields of expertise and competing interests are required to work together to deliver a product, provide a service, or to effect change.
Another predictable outcome from both being advised and advising is the need for an organization to have a strategic plan. This leads to planning activities, and I have realized that many organizations have piles of strategic plans. They do not follow the plans; they do not think to follow the plan. The planning activity is an isolated exercise.
Organizations need to use their plans. This is part of continuity; namely, that for an organization to move out of a fibrillation of inefficiency and ineffectiveness, a sustained focus on goals, building from successes, and correcting deficiencies are necessary steps. That is, they need to read and use the damn plan. Otherwise, they just start over and over again.
Communications and continuity are essential elements of problem solving and changing organizations. A key goal of communications is risk reduction in the place of crisis management.
Communication
After being advised by a manager at NASA, who thrived by information hiding, that I and my organization needed to “communicate better,” I wrote a memo entitled “Communication is the 100% Responsibility of Both Sides.” My point was that my organization could “communicate” its heart out, but it also required others to listen, read, see, and comprehend.
This outward looking communication; that is, how does an organization inform other organizations and the public, is what many think about when they talk about communications. Here, this will be termed “outreach.” A traditional form is the newsletter or articles in, for example, a trade magazine. Other tried and true forms are presentations at public meetings and press releases. Within a large organization, such as a federal agency or a university, there is the briefing to management. With the advent of social media, a social media presence has emerged as a critical element of outreach.
Though this outward looking communication is important, it often comes at the expense of the internal communications within an organization. It is this internal communication which is usually at the core of the concerns of advisory panels. With their external eye, an astute advisory panel sees the disconnections between different parts of an organization; disconnections and behavior that have become so engrained as to be normalized.
These disconnections may be responsible for inefficiency, or they may be at the center of perceived or impending failure. Analyses of failures, such as NASA’s Challenger Space Shuttle disaster, always point to failed communications – the disaster could have been avoided.
Explicitly addressing effective communication is an essential ingredient to reduce the barriers in the synthesis or integration of disparate contributors to realize organizational outcomes. Similarly, using the definition of “problem solving” as the synthesis of knowledge and interests towards specific outcomes, communication is a skill that needs to be taught.
A key role of the management of successful projects is, therefore, to assure communication. Organizational communication practices become more important as the complexity of products grows and as the number of people involved in developing a product grows. For the science-based organizations, the products required both the expertise of several scientific disciplines and the expertise of professionals in engineering, communications, operations, and management.
In all of the organizations I have managed, there has also been substantial resistance to not only efforts to better manage communications but, in fact, to communicate. This resistance comes at all levels – from individuals and groups, to organizational subunits and organizational sponsors, to the organization itself. In some cases, analysis reveals that communication resistance occurs because some feel that they are able to be successful because they do not communicate. Hence, it is an issue of holding control or power. This might be a conscious decision or it might be structural to the point of being subconscious, natural, or normalized. 1(Silos of Excellence.)
Another common source of resistance is that individuals, groups, and subunits view the overhead of communication as too high. This leads to the statement, “we spend too much time talking and not enough time doing.” There is the discrediting of management and meetings as “talking meetings.” 2(Need to come back to this as a political tactic.)
There is a desire to limit communication as distracting – “close the door and get work done.” There is little recognition that if their work outcomes need to fit into a larger system, that the closed door policy is likely to contribute to fragmented capacity that never quite fits together. Indeed, the lack of communication early in the process is strongly associated with delayed schedules and cost overruns.
A second claim that the overhead is too high is that program managers and line managers do not value communications enough to provide the needed resources, especially, internal communications. These resources, money and people, come at the expense of “the science.” In the organizations which I have been engaged to change, in the beginning, “the science” is always held in a mythical, superior position to all other aspects of the enterprise, including the product. The product is expected to come naturally from the “best science.” Similarly, communication is expected to come naturally from well intentioned, collaborative individuals. 3(80% and well intentioned rule) In addition to addressing, explicitly, communications, an essential management tenet is that successful products require organizations and individuals taking responsibility of that product
Roles of Communication in Organizations
The examples noted above suggest that the natural disposition of an organization is likely to be drawn towards deficient, inefficient, or ineffective internal communication. This is without consideration of individuals or organizational subunits that might manage their communication with personal or political intent. For a product-focused, science-based organization, leaving effective communication to well-intentioned people is a management mistake.
At the foundation for establishing the importance of internal communication are experiences and academic studies that examine successful software products, information systems, and, in general, complex problem solving. Given that many individuals and organizations are to contribute to the final outcome, it is reasonable to imagine all of these contributions in, for example, a supply chain. The supply chain might be perceived as hierarchical, suggesting valued-added, superior, and inferior positions. In this way, communications often reflects management’s organizational chart. Such a hierarchy immediately suggests a power structure, which will frame communication paths – who feels comfortable talking to whom.
Successful problem solving and software development have been shown to be highly reliant on incorporation of end-user needs into the early stages of product development; that is, end users and developers. In problem solving environments, the language is, often, knowledge users and knowledge providers. In some instances, the knowledge providers are called subject matter experts. If one were to imagine a situation where knowledge or software were being brought into a larger system to provide the ultimate product, it is easy to see that knowledge providers and knowledge users are likely to change or flip their roles at different points in the process.
Therefore, as an alternative to a product proceeding through a supply chain or in a hierarchical process, it is useful to frame the organization as an ecosystem. In this ecosystem, the relationships between individuals, organization subunits, scientific and engineering contributions, end-user/customer requirements, and competing priorities are constantly changing. If the communication is left at the individual and subunit scale, then outcomes are likely to align with personal relationships of people who like to work together or activities that excite and advance the narrow interests and expertise of the subunits. Like an ecosystem overtaken by an opportunistic weed, the final product is likely to overrepresent the most successful individuals and subunits. That overrepresentation will lead to deficient or failed products.
Therefore, communication planning and practice must assure the exposure of knowledge and progress on all of the organizational contributions that need to be balanced and present in the final product. There must be adequate knowledge so that those who have the responsibility of delivery of the final product can emphasize and deemphasize the parts of system that are lagging or leading at the individual or subunit level. Management decision making might be communal decision making or executive decision making. No matter the form of management, the organizational leadership must assure that the system requirements of the organization’s goals and products are given priority.
Therefore, it is a key management responsibility to enforce the communication that an organization needs. This includes persistent attention to overcoming the enduring barriers to communication. This requires addressing and managing the uncomfortable topics associated with personal likes and dislikes, tensions associated with competing intellectual and methodological approaches, and allocation of human and monetary resources. Managers must realize that tensions are part of the system; they must be managed, not avoided. Avoidance of tensions diffuses organizational behavior to the point of pablum.
Essential to internal communications are the documents that establish the organization, its mission and values. Values include accuracy, completeness, and accessibility of information. Foundational documents include governance, policies and procedures, continuity documents, plans, reports, and software and technical documentation. A scientific organization has the need to provide data, supporting descriptions, and access and manuals. An outward looking community organization needs to provide a customer interface, which includes help services that lead end users and potential new members to information as well as human expertise.
An excellent communications plan is provided in the Unified Forecast System Communication and Outreach Plan. As software is a primary product, a durable reference on the important role of communications, Destroying Communication and Control in Software Development.
Roles of Outreach 4(incomplete)
As defined above, outreach is outward looking communication; that is, how does an organization inform other organizations and the public. For the most part outreach, especially that associated with advertising and social media, will be left to elsewhere.
Of special important, here, however is the information associated with an organization’s website. Many organizations have a website that serve as content management systems that provide both members and potential members a primary tool of internal communication. In addition, the website serves as a portal to the information needed by end users of products. Such a website, also, serves as a branding of the organization – does the organization appear legitimate, credible, and convey professionalism.
It is essential that an organization have a website that is accurate, accessible, usable, and transparent. It needs to support and express internal coherence. This is a precondition to elevating outreach as a priority.
Continuity 5(incomplete)
Early in my career I recognized the pattern of the “first meeting.” At NASA, and later at the University of Michigan, I sat through many excellent first meetings. Many of these meetings had been called because of either crisis, something was going wrong, or opportunity, perhaps a call for research proposals. All of the people were called from all of the organizations. The meeting started with ideas and venting. This was followed by the articulation of the crisis or the opportunity. It was ended with everyone agreeing that we had resources to deal with problem or answer the opportunity. The first thing we needed to do was to do an inventory of those resources. Then, make a plan.
“That was an excellent first meeting.”
Rarely, did this meeting lead to addressing, with success, the problem or writing a good research proposal. More likely, some time later, perhaps with new organizational management, we would have the same meeting again.
I arrived at one of my management mantras: the success of a meeting is the “next meeting” or the second meeting is far more important than the first.
There is a no more effective way to change an organization than persistence and continuity – the stout stake of the organization’s goals and the leader pulling all strands of the organization towards that goal. A tactic for continuity is having one meeting build off of the last, which requires durable and effective communications.
Extras 6
Extras:
In fact, I took that management criticism as a small metric of success; we were important enough and successful enough that we needed to acknowledged. Of course, part of their concern was that we were commanding more and more resources.
In the 1990s, there was a push towards interdisciplinary, systems-focused research. Since that time I have been in dozens of meetings and program reviews on interdisciplinary science. Likewise, I have been on many review panels of organizations that require interdisciplinary science to develop successful products and to achieve organizational goals. In the vast majority of cases, programs and organizations are far from optimal in addressing problems that require the synthesis or integration of expertise of across interests, skill-based expertise, and scientific disciplines.