Office Culture II – Official Communications that Doesn’t Communicate

> Office Culture Series, No. 2

As a long-time corporate communications person, I should stand on my soapbox and rail about the superiority of official communications programs , where grammar is always correct, strategic themes are explored and the company’s values are put into practice daily.

Sorry. The fact is, a lot of corporate communications efforts fail because they use stiff, flowery or jargon-filled language that avoids meaningful communication.

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has made a career documenting the disparity between official corporate goals and the stupidity that managers encourage in the name of pursuing “optimization,” “efficiency” and “profitability”.

There’s a reason executives get uncomfortable with the use of direct sentences with active verbs – their accountability for the company’s success or failure becomes much clearer.

Ducking away from that accountability by pumping up the volume of the flack-o-meter doesn’t help. It just hides your organization’s true goals, and forces employees, shareholders and customers to guess what you’re trying to do, and how you plan to do it.

Image from Sears Roebuck catalogue, 1954, via Very Good with Computers

Office Culture Series:

Gap Between Formal and Informal Communications Can Be Dangerous

Tags: business, clarity, communications, culture, employees