The communication trap

The problems that arise when there is too little communication in a company are well-documented. However, most companies are now struggling with the exact opposite: too much communication. Countless emails and chat messages flow daily between workers. In this interview with Andrew Filev, we discuss the consequences of this and how to avoid communication breakdowns.

Andrew is the founder and CEO of the work management provider Wrike. He founded his first IT consultancy company at the age of 17. Because he was frustrated with the limits imposed on his work by emails and data tables, he developed a new generation of collaboration tool. At last year's Re: publica conference, Andrew spoke on creating an international company culture.

 

As the CEO of a global company with 500 employees, you know from experience that efficient communication contributes significantly to success. What is a typical communication trap for you?

For many people, communication means to react instead of acting. They try to be the master of myriad emails and chat messages and do not do their work actively. The reason for this is an unstructured, synchronous form of communication; you try to react immediately, often without the context and all the necessary background information. On the other hand, if communication takes place transparently and directly within the context of the respective project, and information can be easily accessed, space for creative processes and innovation arises.

 

Your company is very active in uncovering reasons for inefficient communication and its consequences. Can you summarize the most important findings?

Last year, we asked office workers in Germany, the UK and France, what specifically limited their productivity. "Too many things to do at the same time" was the number one communication obstacle. In fact, many of our studies have found that workers are most commonly overwhelmed when communications pass through multiple channels. They simply can't keep pace filtering out the relevant information. This is also reflected in "too many e-mails" and "too many inefficient meetings" ranking second and third place in the survey, respectively.

 

How can executives and team leaders point their team the way out of the communication jungle?

In design, there is a rule that "form follows function." A similar requirement should also exist for communication - "The message determines the communication form." For example, no boss should fire an employee via a chat message. But even less serious discussions should always go over the appropriate channel. 

For project management, email is no longer a viable tool to collaborate through efficiently. Modern collaboration tools that bundle tasks, data and the associated communication in one thread are much stronger options. If you want to go deeper, I recommend my blog series about  project mistakes, especially the blog "Communication failure". 

 

We're excited to once again be at the re:publica conference in Dublin. Stop by and say hello!