Communication
The essence of all businesses are promotion of products, services or the organizations. The process by which this promotion is done is called business communication. Business communication also includes circulating information within the business as well as dealing with legal and other associated issues.
Marketing, Branding, Customer relations, Consumer behavior, Advertising, Public relations, Corporate communication, Community engagement, Research & Measurement, Reputation management, Interpersonal communication, Employee engagement, Online communication, and Event management all come within the purview of business communication. Business communication is an allied field of professional and technical communication (Taylor, 2005).
Methods of Communication
Business communication is done through various methods such as:
- FACE TO FACE meetings – a personal mode of communication which proves to be very effective when followed or accompanied by written communication.
TELEPHONED meetings – very much akin to face to face meetings, it allows speech over long distance. - E-MAILS – provide an instantaneous mode of written communication with a personal touch, around the globe.
PRESENTATIONS – often involving audiovisual material, is a very popular method of communication in almost all modern organizations.
FORUM BOARDS – allows instant communication by displaying information in a centrally located display area. - WEB-BASED communication – another mode of instant communication anytime, anywhere around the world.
Aspects of Communication
- Attention. The primary aspect of communication is to attract a person’s attention and to hold it by eliminating “noise,” which indicates anything that distracts the person to whom we are communicating or intending to communicate.
- Apprehension.Apprehension primarily means “understanding” though in common usage the connotation conveys “fear.” The second major test of the communicator is to transform the “fear” in the mind of the person communicated to into “understanding.”
- Assimilation. Assimilation is nearly as important as apprehension. Often a person pays attention and understands what is being communicated but does not accept it or does so half-heartedly. As a result, the whole process of communication remains incomplete and ineffective. Thus, it becomes imperative for the communicator to convince the person communicated to, for communication to be successful. (Doerfel, Summer 2002).
- Action. The last aspect in the process of communication, action, indicates the translation of abstract theoretical knowledge or information into the world of reality or practice. Therefore, unless the content of whatever has been communicated is not transformed into action no business will be viable or successful.
One of the major obstacles that come in the path of productivity in any business is “ineffective communication” and it is entirely avoidable. With proper and adequate will every situation can be given a positive turn.
Thus, all business managements must constantly face up to the challenges of effective communication and keep on forming strategies to encourage all the personnel to hone their communicative skills. The manager and higher executives play a vital role in setting the right example for everyone in the organization to follow.
Communication is not a unidirectional process. In fact, for it to be successful it has to be reciprocal, i.e. the communicator should be able to fathom whether the other person has received the information and has assimilated it. The process of communication deals with human beings at both the ends – the communicator and the receiver.
Thus, communication, everywhere, as in all business and commercial situations, is not only a matter of transmitting information it is also a matter of “human relationship”. So, for effective communication, it is just as important for the communicator to understand the person communicated to as understanding what is to be communicated and how. (Rouse, 2001).
Business probability: Why It’s Important?
In business, probability plays a very significant role in forecasting the end result of a system as well as to predict and analyze the threats to that system so as to minimize the risks involved. There are two elements of risk – “probability and impact”. The procedure of business impact analysis is a very effective process of analyzing the negative impact in the event of a threat actually materializing.
Subjective judgement is the fundamental problem of probability as the process of analysis is based on the facts that are known at that given point of time. If the known facts are truncated for some reason, or some of the facts are not known or accounted for, the process of assessing the risk would be flawed. Sometimes optimism can be considered to be a problem of probability.
If the personnel of the organization are overly optimistic then it might affect their ability to assess risks. They may not want to believe that the threat might affect them. Over optimism might get communicated from some of the personnel to all others and negatively affect the business. On the other hand, an executive who is aware of this problem may communicate the reality to the subordinates and other personnel, thereby lessening the risk factor.
This, however, does not mean that the personnel must always function without any optimism it only means that analysis of risks must be realistic to be effective. Since we are functioning in a largely dynamic order which is prone to the influence of a large number of factors, some of them being stochastic and beyond our control and others being internal and controllable, it has always been a corporate challenge to evolve ways and means to identify and, if possible, quantify the incidences of such risks in order to mitigate them. (Nelson, January 1997)
Communication & Business Probability
As we know, a corporate entity, primarily, has its two interfaces – the internal, viz., its employees, shareholders and the external viz., its users/ outsourced agents/contractors and clients. Corporate communication, both internal and those which are front-ended, conveyed to its intermediate and final users, is one of the most important strategies of ensuring business growth, containing, to a large extent, the chance-factors contributing to business risks and probability.
So far as its internal customers are concerned, no one can deny the importance of corporate manuals and Handbooks, so far as they objectively lay down the detailed duty structures, job descriptions of employees, giving elaborate work instructions, delegations and accountability points, which in a way, broadens the scope of understanding and mutual corporate expectations between the two important arms of the business entity, its management on one side and the staff on the other, with a responsible Union functioning as the intermediary.
Detailed bipartite agreements, communicated with transparency, laying down the rights and obligations, service and pay conditions of employees , undoubtedly, broaden the scope of attaining a co-operative and a complementary business approach, considerably narrowing down future scopes of conflict and friction, affecting work culture and business risks. (Nelson, January 1997).
The Corporate Vision/Mission Statement or the Charter of Declaration, in so far as it underlines the over-arching corporate ideal while pinning down the more immediate principles of business governance, sends out a clear signal to its customers/clients about the relative positioning/value addition/growth profile that the company strives to attain in the shorter/longer time horizons.
While it helps the former to fine-tune its expectations, it also sensitizing its employees to put up its best to fulfill the business expectations (through higher motivation/work-morale/leadership skills), in the underlying corporate interest. This, undoubtedly, builds a bridge between the high hills of business challenges set forth by the company and the conscious attempts made for their attainments, narrowing down scopes of confusion and conflict, the perennial sources of business volatility.
Apart from it, regular interactive meets, questionnaires, customer feedbacks, Power Point Presentations always help the management to continually up its ante to, stay tuned to the newer demands and hard-sell/ re-position itself to live up to the expectations of its users- while internally, the House Magazines, corporate dossiers, help a meeting of minds of the management and its staff, and act as an effective sponge-pad for absorbing internal discords and strifes – the key feeds for work stoppage and resultant business uncertainties. (Gilsdorf, 1999).
Often, for contractual assignments in capital intensive projects which impact corporate profitability, clear, objective and unambiguously communicated, terms and provisions , criteria of evaluation, selection as laid down in the contract conditions, viz., RFQ (Request for Qualification) and RFP (Request for Proposals) Documents, go a long way in short listing the contractors in terms of their desired potential and eligibility and zero in on the final contractor, by dint of his quality assuredness and proven timeliness.
Clear and no-nonsense communications spelt out in the Bid Document itself (which are explicit and not prone to subjective interpretations) regarding performance/non-performance related issues are extremely important. An ideally worded contract, which communicates effectively, leads to its perfect management. They contain, apart from cost and time over-run of projects, contractual failures /abandonment of jobs/protracted legal disputes, which create deep holes in the company’s purse-pocket, affecting business credibility and client disaffection. (Nelson, January 1997).
Conclusion
We know, so far as corporate contingencies or risk factors are concerned, there are a whole lot of exogenous inputs, starting from our immediate micro environment to the macro (say, from the general socio-political conduciveness of a business venture, government fiscal and monetary policies, Exim-strategies, the entire regimen of taxes, incentives etc., the local administrative/environmental rules and statutes, affecting the flow of credit etc.) over which a business entity has scant control.
Some of the factors are, however, endogenous, relating to staff-size, emoluments, targets of sales and profitability, dividend pay-outs ,employee stock options, etc. regarding which, an entity, after carefully scanning its external environment, takes conscious decisions on the basis of a largely consensual approach of rational expectations and planning, judgment and a hard business sense. (Guffey, 2005).
We know that an institutional corrective/preventive arrangement in terms of an elaborate control/safety mechanism, for staving off major exigencies like fire, explosions and other physical disasters, breach of information security, data-mutilation and hackeying, etc. can be put to place. This may be done, commensurate with the business positioning of the company, through a disseminated awareness of the installed system’s projected aim and effectiveness, across the corporate hierarchy, though at a high corporate cost (Marshall, March 2007).
However, the fact remains that hard-core business communication, bereft of its high-toned frills and fixtures, continues to be one of the most effective and inexpensive ways of containing business probability as our above discussion, bears out succinctly.
References
Doerfel, Marya L. & Brent D. Ruben; Summer 2002; Developing more adaptive, innovative, and interactive organizations; New Directions for Higher Education; Volume 2002, Issue 118, 5-28.
Gilsdorf, Jeannette Wortman & Gretchen N Vik; 1999; Business Communication; Primis Custom Pub.
Guffey, Mary Ellen; 2005; Business Communication: Process and Product; Thomson/South-Western.
Marshall, Greg W. Charles E. Michaels & Jay P. Mulki; March 2007; Workplace isolation: Exploring the construct and its measurement; Psychology and Marketing; Volume 24, Issue 3, Pages: 195-223.
Nelson, Terry & Helene Coxhead; January 1997; Increasing the Probability of Re-Engineering/Culture Change Success Through Effective Internal Communication; Strategic Change; Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages: 29-48.
Rouse, Michael J & Sandra Rouse; 2001; Business Communications: A Cultural and Strategic Approach; Cengage Learning EMEA.
Taylor, Shirley; 2005; Communication for Business: A Practical Approach; Pearson Longman.