• "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans ". – John Lennon.

• Awakening the Buddhist Heart. Author: Lama Surya Das. Publisher: Bantam. The quality of our relationships with others, the world and ourselves determines our quality of life. This book is about how to cultivate our innate spiritual intelligence to increase our sensitivity towards others, making us better partners, parents, friends, managers, colleagues - and people.

• http://www.linkpopularity.com One way to measure the popularity of your website is to check out this website and see how you rate. If you are not already doing so, ensure that your Internet Service Provider is providing you with a detailed breakdown of all traffic visiting your website. This service should be free and included as standard in the service they provide you.

Keeping people ‘in on things’ is one thing, how you do it is another.

The dictionary defines communication as an exchange of information. The key word here is exchange. It infers a two way process. Dialogue, not monologue.

A more modern definition defines communication as ‘the response you get’. I like this definition because it clearly assigns primary responsibility in the communication process to the sender, not the receiver.

I recall several years ago working with flight attendants from a major airline. One of the participants complained that he had filed four separate internal memos reporting a faulty video player on one of their aircraft and that still nothing had happened. He claimed that there was nothing more that he could do. He wasn’t too happy when I pointed out that the effect of his communication was exactly the same as if he had never filed any memo.

The question then arises, ‘has communication occurred if (a) the intended recipient(s) didn’t receive it; (b) the recipient received the information and did nothing: or (c) the recipient responded in a way that was different to that intended? Clearly it hasn’t.

Effective communication within any organisation is paramount to its very survival. It is therefore vitally important that careful consideration be given to what methods of internal communication are most suitable for your business.

Some of the options, which I will expand on in later newsletters, include intra-office emails, hand-written memos, regular staff meetings, staff notice-boards, staff newsletters, manager’s bulletins, announcements over public address systems, internal customer focus groups, personal one-on-one chats, the list goes on.

The only way to evaluate the effectiveness of your internal communication system is to rigorously review what’s really happening. In other words, ‘is the message getting through?’

Many companies are now using intra-office emails, even if the person is in the adjacent cubicle. The problem though, is that people are in email overwhelm, and by the time they get around to clearing their emails, it may be to late for them to respond. The person sending the email ‘feels’ that they have done their bit, but the receiver feels quite different. Only use emails if this is clearly the most effective way to communicate with another person. If getting up from your desk, or walking or driving over to a colleague’s work area and personally speaking to them is the best way to ensure that they ‘get the message’, then do it.

So often in corporate training workshops, I hear the whinings of disgruntled staff who say they never hear from management. Or the only time they do is when something has gone wrong. This situation typifies an organisation that doesn’t have an open and effective communication culture. Darkness and silence may work for growing mushrooms, but it won’t work for growing people.

In an age of information overload, designing an effective internal communication system for your organisation has never been more important. Please take the time to implement one that works. And remember, communication is the response you get.

Until next week, many happy customer returns!

Graham Harvey APS

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