Brace Yourselves!

"French passengers on an Aer Lingus Dublin-Paris flight were thrown into panic when a faulty announcement told them the plane was about to make an emergency landing, the airline said.
An English-language announcement 20 minutes after leaving Dublin said the plane was heading into turbulence, asking passengers to return to their seats - but the pre-recorded French version said they were about to ditch." 

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald serves as a sharp reminder that, even when we communicate in a timely manner, if we do not check the message we can cause ever deepening confusion or in this case, fear of a crash.

The meaning of communication goes a lot deeper than most people often think about. Communication is about designing, sending, receiving, interpreting messages and providing feedback on these messages. A failure at any point in this chain is ineffective communication. This can be disastrous. There is the famous story of the British Army Commander who sent the message "Send reinforcements, we're going to advance." back to the Command Centre, through a long chain of subordinates. When the message finally reached the Command Centre, it had "mutated" to become "Send three and four-pence, we're going to a dance." Needless to say, the reinforcements never arrived. The message received by the target audience is what matters and if the message received is wrong, then we must change the message that is being sent.


In her articles on Communications and Change Management, Susan Heathfield says that "As the speed of change continues to increase, change management is a fundamental competency needed by managers, supervisors, Human Resources staff, and organization leaders." Effective communication will never be achieved through the use of a singular channel, such as e-mail. It can only really be achieved through a holistic integration of a variety of channels; face to face, town halls, use of 'connectors' within the employee population, management cascade, web pages and, yes, however much we dislike it, e-mail.

Effective, timely and relevant communications are the backbone of any successful project or change initiative, whether IT, HR or any other Business function.  The best project plan in the world with the most effective implementation capability will fail if the communications plan is not well thought through and appropriate to the targeted audience(s).  The challenge for HR is to both guide, influence and, in some cases, direct the communications aspects of change for internal messaging within the company, especially as it impacts both staff and is a key element in the company's Employee Value Proposition.

And Finally...

I leave you with a quote from George Bernard Shaw, playwright and essayist.  A man who should know a thing or two about communication given that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. 

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

All the best,

Jim