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Information is the lifeblood of an organization. To effectively convey information, communication is necessary. Communication is conveyed in several forms, including verbal and written methods. It is important that the method used to convey the information is understandable by its intended recipient. Otherwise the communication is wasted and a business could suffer.

Internal Communication Channels
Internal communication channels include face-to-face meetings, internal emails, newsletters and memos, communications between managers and employees, and communications between peers.

External Communication Channels
External communication is any communication between a business and the outside world. Public relations statements, press releases, marketing materials, commercials, and articles and books written by or about the business are all examples of external communication.

Importance
Effective communication across both channels is necessary for a business to thrive. Internal communication keeps a business viable. Without communication between all levels of the business, directives cannot be completed, slowing the growth of the business. External communication is the lifeblood of a business. Without clear communication of a company's products to customers, a business will not grow.

Communication Breakdown
Effective communication in both channels must be clear and convey the correct message. A lack of communication internally, such as misunderstood directives between management and associate-level employees, can lead to a breakdown of business processes. A cloudy external message can lead to decreased sales and a negative effect upon a business' bottom line.

Body Language
Communicators must be careful that what they are saying is not contradicted by the method of delivery. A face-to-face meeting between a manager and employee can be completely derailed if the deliverer of the message's body language states the opposite of what is intended. For example, a manager who listens to his employee's concerns with his arms folded and shoulders raised is indicating he is not open to what is being presented to him, even if he truly is concerned. His body language is undermining his actual message.

Clouding the Message
External communication should be as clear and concise as possible and not clouded with ambiguity or vagueness. When authoring sales materials, keep in mind that potential

customers do not want to be sold to or told how great your product is; they want to be moved to buy and will determine the greatness of the product themselves. Your message should portray how the product or service can make life easier for them. For public relations and press announcements, this concept also applies: ensure the message conveyed explains how your company's product can help the audience.

Cultural Considerations
Cultural differences also must be taken into consideration. What means nothing to one culture speaks volumes in another. For example, in some Asian cultures, it is considered disrespectful to look a supervisor in the eye. However, in the American culture, not looking directly at someone while speaking to them conveys either insecurity or untruthfulness. It is important to know your audience and to adapt your message to fit it.

FAMILY BUSINESS COMMUNICATION Many Channels to Navigate
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"Family business communi cation is an increasingly important business function that family businesses need to manage with a clear vision and strategy," according to top family business expert Don Schwerzler. Schwerzler has been studying and advising family businesses for more than 40 years and is the founder of the Family Business Institute . The topic of business communication is so broad that it can be easy to forget just how many aspects there are to effective communications for family businesses. And with the advent of social networking,

it is easy to lose focus on the communication strategies and initiatives being employed by a family business. Throughout our site, we present the topics in the context of other family business problems and opportunities. So, we use this page to bring all the topics together in one reference source. Use it as your index or guide to all of our business communication materials. There are three channels of business communications external, internal and cross channel.

Business Communication External Channels
External channels of communication include public relations, marketing, press releases, web-related strategies and publishing books and articles. Marketing strategies - simple or complex - should start with the development of a marketing plan. The 4 Ps of marketing classify the four controllable elements of your marketing plan. Product, place [distribution] and promotion are all expenses; price brings in revenue. Family businesses must pay close attention to controlling

each of the four. The 4 Ps of marketing Once the marketing plan and budget are agreed upon, the next big step is the development of the marketing materials. Just because you as the business owner know your business does not mean you are an effective copy writer of business communication. Using a professional writer simply makes good sense. Professional Writer The high priests of communication strategies are the public relation firms these are the folks we see every night on the TV news spinning the news stories for politicians and special interest groups. Few small to medium sized family businesses can afford a high priced public relations firm but every good entrepreneur can find good ways to get the name of their company into the media. Opportunities abound from sponsoring little league teams to being nominated for a family business profile on our web site. Family Business Profiles Another way to enhance the public's awareness of a company or individual is to write a book. With today’s technology, being a published author is not an expensive proposition.

Write a Book A sure-fire way to establish professional or expert status is to write a book. Not a good writer? Hire one! Business Cards, Brochures, Post Cards Printed materials like business cards, post cards, brochures can are powerful tools that can help promote and brand your business.

Business Communication Internal Channels
Internal communication channels include employee newsletters, employee handbooks, management handbooks, human resources forms, pre-employment checks, organizational guides, employee satisfaction surveys, team building, business valuation, project management, and swot analysis. One of the best tools a family business can develop to encourage the sense of family with the employees is to publish an employee news letter. An employee newsletter is a great tool to communicate the values of the family to the employees of the business. For some family businesses a weekly letter from the owner of the business posted on the company bulletin board will suffice. Others might care to

hire a ghost writer to develop a professional version Publish a Newsletter As the family business grows, so too will the number of employees who are not family members. Family members can be more forgiving of politically incorrect transgressions but non-family members of the business might be less forgiving. In fact, nowadays they are likely to take legal action. A law suit can destroy the business. The best way to communicate the rules of the business is to use an employee handbook. Employee Handbook For many family businesses, hiring new people is always a risk. Will the new people fit in? Will they have the same values and work ethic as the family? Technology offers an inexpensive tool to know more about the individuals they hire than just the information on the employment application forms and resumes. Background Check Over the past few years the role of the human resource department has changed dramatically. The key to sustained growth for family business is to formalize the management of the business. Human resource people can help the business become more professionally managed.

Complete Human Resource Department Forms Management How To Guide As the family business grows, the organizational structure of the business must change as well. The management of the business will need to evolve towards more scientific management to better understand the complexities of organization and change management. We offer many great tips and ideas on the change management section of our web site. Change Management Practitioner's Guide for Organizing an Organization When the family business first started out, the owner was able to meet and greet everyone everyday but as the business grows the family business owner has less opportunity to take the pulse of the employees. To really know what is going on, "management by walking around" is helpful but very superficial. Cutting edge organizational assessment tools are easy to use and very affordable, for example the ODS-OL (Organizational Diagnostic Survey-OnLine) assessment tool. ODS-OL Assessment Team building is another essential of business

communication success. A wonderful tool is available to help create solidarity and to ensure your work teams are working on solving problems not just spending their time treating the recurring symptoms of problems. Key Business Questions for Team Building Business valuation is another opportunity for business communication success. Business valuations can be used to keep the strategic planning of the business focused on increasing share holder value. Valuations can also be used to shape compensation plans for the family as well as for key non-family executive managers. Business valuation can also be used as part of the succession management process. Family Business Valuation When the family business is first getting started the business owner can keep most everything that is "going on" in their head. But as the business grows and duties and responsibilities for running the business become less centralized, it is important for the family business owner to consider using project management tools to keep everything on track. Project KickStart - project management software

Cross Channel Business Communication
Cross channel business communication includes web sites, customer relationship management, telecommunications, vision and mission statements, family business history books, corporate governance, family foundations and business plans. When we discuss cross channel business communication, the web site for the business is top of the list in importance. The web site can be used for public relations, marketing, sales and customer relations. In other words, it can touch almost every element of a business including allowing customers to check the status of their orders. We feel that a web site should be considered and managed as would any other profit center. Site Build It (SBI)is a proven tool when developing a web site strategy for your family business - we recommend SBI to our family business clients. Make More Money Using eBusiness Strategies for Your Family Business Customer relationship management is a very important part of business communication. As in other parts of the business, technology is making CRM ever more efficient and

effective. Sales Force Automation can organize all your marketing, sales and business development information. Business Communication discussions would be remiss if we did not talk about using your computer to make telephone calls. This is known as Voice-overinternet-protocol or VOIP. SKYPE should be considered because it allows SKYPE customers to talk with one another for free any time of the day with no limit to how much time is used. Using Skype to connect to the telephones of those who are not Skype members is very cost effective and generally cheaper than long distance or cellular - and the connections are often clearer and more reliable also! www.skype.com Another aspect of team building in business communication is SWOT Analysis - one of the most productive exercises a company can do to build better connected teams. SWOT Analysis can also be used to get input from customers and vendors. Asking the right questions is critical to a good SWOT Analysis, so we developed 160 Key Business Questions to help. SWOT Analysis Mission and vision

statements are another important part of business communication. More and more, people are using vision and mission statements when they are seeking new strategic business partners. Vision and mission statements help to communicate the values of the business. See how easy it can be to create and or update your vision and mission statements... we recommend Mission Experts Mission and vision statements Family business history books and legacy walls are also important strategies for business communication. Sharing the history of the business is a wonderful way to build relationships with customers, vendors and new employees. Family Business Histories How to successfully organize an organization is all about business communication. Successful organizations have a common thread - they react to change rapidly. ODS-OL is the perfect online tool for top managers and independent directors to use in assessing their organizations. ODS-OL assessment tool for top managers and outside directors We think this is the best online organization assessment tool available! If you are a

med-large family business this assessment tool will enable you to know if the management team is aligned with the core values of the family. If you are serving as a director of a larger-sized company - this assessment tool will provide information and insights about the leadership of the business, not just at the top - but throughout the entire organization.

FAMILY BUSINESS COMMUNICATION Many Channels to Navigate

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Translate

"Family business communication is an increasingly important business function that family businesses need to manage with a clear vision and strategy," according to top family business expert Don Schwerzler. Schwerzler has been studying and advising family businesses for more than 40 years and is the founder of the Family Business Institute . The topic of business communication is so broad that it can be easy to forget just how many aspects there are to effective communications for family businesses. And with the advent of social networking, it is easy to lose focus on the communication strategies and initiatives being employed by a family business. Throughout our site, we present the topics in the context of other family business problems and opportunities. So, we use this page to bring all the topics together in one reference source. Use it as your index or guide to all of our business communication materials. There are three channels of business communications - external, internal and cross channel.

Business Communication - External Channels
External channels of communication include public relations, marketing, press releases, web-related strategies and publishing books and articles. Marketing strategies - simple or complex - should start with the development of a marketing plan. The 4 Ps of marketing classify the four controllable elements of your marketing plan. Product,

step is the development of the marketing materials. Just because you as the business owner know your business does not mean you are an effective copy writer of business communication. Using a professional writer simply makes good sense. Professional Writer The high priests of communication strategies are the public relation firms - these are the folks we see every night on the TV news spinning the news stories for politicians and special interest groups. Few small to medium sized family businesses can afford a high priced public relations firm but every good entrepreneur can find good ways to get the name of their company into the media. Opportunities abound from sponsoring little league teams to being nominated for a family business profile on our web site. Family Business Profiles Another way to enhance the public's awareness of a company or individual is to write a book. With today’s technology, being a published author is not an expensive proposition. Write a Book A sure-fire way to establish professional or expert status is to write a book. Not a good writer? Hire one! Business Cards, Brochures, Post Cards Printed materials like business cards, post cards, brochures can are powerful tools that can help promote and brand your business.

Business Communication - Internal Channels
Internal communication channels include employee newsletters, employee handbooks, management handbooks, human resources forms, pre-employment checks, organizational guides, employee satisfaction surveys, team building, business valuation, project management, and swot analysis. One of the best tools a family business can develop to encourage the sense of family with the employees is to publish an employee news letter. An employee newsletter is a great tool to communicate the values of the family to the employees of the business. For some family businesses a weekly letter from the owner of the business posted on the company bulletin board will suffice. Others might care to hire a ghost writer to develop a professional version

Publish a Newsletter As the family business grows, so too will the number of employees who are not family members. Family members can be more forgiving of politically incorrect transgressions but non-family members of the business might be less forgiving. In fact, nowadays they are likely to take legal action. A law suit can destroy the business. The best way to communicate the rules of the business is to use an employee handbook. Employee Handbook For many family businesses, hiring new people is always a risk. Will the new people fit in? Will they have the same values and work ethic as the family? Technology offers an inexpensive tool to know more about the individuals they hire than just the information on the employment application forms and resumes. Background Check Over the past few years the role of the human resource department has changed dramatically. The key to sustained growth for family business is to formalize the management of the business. Human resource people can help the business become more professionally managed. Complete Human Resource Department Forms Management How To Guide As the family business grows, the organizational structure of the business must change as well. The management of the business will need to evolve towards more scientific management to better understand the complexities of organization and change management. We offer many great tips and ideas on the change management section of our web site. Change Management Practitioner's Guide for Organizing an Organization When the family business first started out, the owner was able to meet and greet everyone everyday but as the business grows the family business owner has less opportunity to take the pulse of the employees. To really know what is going on, "management by walking around" is helpful but very superficial. Cutting edge organizational assessment tools are easy to use and very affordable, for example the ODS-OL (Organizational Diagnostic SurveyOnLine) assessment tool.

ODS-OL Assessment Team building is another essential of business communication success. A wonderful tool is available to help create solidarity and to ensure your work teams are working on solving problems not just spending their time treating the recurring symptoms of problems. Key Business Questions for Team Building Business valuation is another opportunity for business communication success. Business valuations can be used to keep the strategic planning of the business focused on increasing share holder value. Valuations can also be used to shape compensation plans for the family as well as for key non-family executive managers. Business valuation can also be used as part of the succession management process. Family Business Valuation When the family business is first getting started the business owner can keep most everything that is "going on" in their head. But as the business grows and duties and responsibilities for running the business become less centralized, it is important for the family business owner to consider using project management tools to keep everything on track. Project KickStart - project management software

Cross Channel Business Communication
Cross channel business communication includes web sites, customer relationship management, telecommunications, vision and mission statements, family business history books, corporate governance, family foundations and business plans. When we discuss cross channel business communication, the web site for the business is top of the list in importance. The web site can be used for public relations, marketing, sales and customer relations. In other words, it can touch almost every element of a business including allowing customers to check the status of their orders. We feel that a web site should be considered and managed as would any other profit center. Site Build It (SBI)is a proven tool when developing a web site strategy for your family business - we recommend SBI to our family business clients. Make More Money Using eBusiness Strategies for Your Family Business

Customer relationship management is a very important part of business communication. As in other parts of the business, technology is making CRM ever more efficient and effective. Sales Force Automation can organize all your marketing, sales and business development information. Business Communication discussions would be remiss if we did not talk about using your computer to make telephone calls. This is known as Voice-over-internet-protocol or VOIP. SKYPE should be considered because it allows SKYPE customers to talk with one another for free any time of the day with no limit to how much time is used. Using Skype to connect to the telephones of those who are not Skype members is very cost effective and generally cheaper than long distance or cellular - and the connections are often clearer and more reliable also! www.skype.com Another aspect of team building in business communication is SWOT Analysis - one of the most productive exercises a company can do to build better connected teams. SWOT Analysis can also be used to get input from customers and vendors. Asking the right questions is critical to a good SWOT Analysis, so we developed 160 Key Business Questions to help. SWOT Analysis Mission and vision statements are another important part of business communication. More and more, people are using vision and mission statements when they are seeking new strategic business partners. Vision and mission statements help to communicate the values of the business. See how easy it can be to create and or update your vision and mission statements... we recommend Mission Experts Mission and vision statements Family business history books and legacy walls are also important strategies for business communication. Sharing the history of the business is a wonderful way to build relationships with customers, vendors and new employees. Family Business Histories How to successfully organize an organization is all about business communication. Successful organizations have a common thread they react to change rapidly. ODS-OL is the perfect online tool for top managers and independent directors to use in assessing their organizations.

ODS-OL assessment tool for top managers and outside directors We think this is the best on-line organization assessment tool available! If you are a med-large family business this assessment tool will enable you to know if the management team is aligned with the core values of the family. If you are serving as a director of a larger-sized company - this assessment tool will provide information and insights about the leadership of the business, not just at the top - but throughout the entire organization.

Organizational communication
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Organizational communication is a subfield of the larger discipline of communication studies. Organizational communication, as a field, is the consideration, analysis, and criticism of the role of communication in organizational contexts.

Contents
[hide]
          

1 History of Organizational Communication 2 Assumptions underlying early organizational communication o 2.1 Communication networks 3 Direction of communication 4 Interpersonal communication 5 Communication Approaches in an Organization 6 Research in organizational communication o 6.1 Research methodologies 7 Current Research Topics in Organizational Communication 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 External links

[edit] History of Organizational Communication
The field traces its lineage through business information, business communication, and early mass communication studies published in the 1930s through the 1950s. Until then, organizational communication as a discipline consisted of a few professors within speech departments who had a particular interest in speaking and writing in business settings. The current field is well established

with its own theories and empirical concerns distinct from other fields. Several seminal publications stand out as works broadening the scope and recognizing the importance of communication in the organizing process, and in using the term "organizational communication". Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon wrote in 1947 about "organization communications systems", saying communication is "absolutely essential to organizations".[1] W. Charles Redding played a prominent role in the establishment of organizational communication as a discipline. In the 1950s, organizational communication focused largely on the role of communication in improving organizational life and organizational output. In the 1980s, the field turned away from a business-oriented approach to communication and became concerned more with the constitutive role of communication in organizing. In the 1990s, critical theory influence on the field was felt as organizational communication scholars focused more on communication's possibilities to oppress and liberate organizational members.

[edit] Assumptions underlying early organizational communication
Some of the main assumptions underlying much of the early organizational communication research were:


Humans act rationally. Sane people do not behave in rational ways, they generally have no access to all of the information needed to make rational decisions they could articulate, and therefore will make unrational decisions, unless there is some breakdown in the communication process—which is common. Unrational people rationalize how they will rationalize their communication measures whether or not it is rational. Formal logic and empirically verifiable data ought to be the foundation upon which any theory should rest. All we really need to understand communication in organizations is (a) observable and replicable behaviors that can be transformed into variables by some form of measurement, and (b) formally replicable syllogisms that can extend theory from observed data to other groups and settings Communication is primarily a mechanical process, in which a message is constructed and encoded by a sender, transmitted through some channel, then received and decoded by a receiver. Distortion, represented as any differences between the original and the received messages, can and ought to be identified and reduced or eliminated.







Organizations are mechanical things, in which the parts (including employees functioning in defined roles) are interchangeable. What works in one organization will work in another similar organization. Individual differences can be minimized or even eliminated with careful management techniques. Organizations function as a container within which communication takes place. Any differences in form or function of communication between that occurring in an organization and in another setting can be identified and studied as factors affecting the communicative activity.



Herbert Simon introduced the concept of bounded rationality which challenged assumptions about the perfect rationality of communication participants. He maintained that people making decisions in organizations seldom had complete information, and that even if more information was available, they tended to pick the first acceptable option, rather than exploring further to pick the optimal solution. Through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s the field expanded greatly in parallel with several other academic disciplines, looking at communication as more than an intentional act designed to transfer an idea. Research expanded beyond the issue of "how to make people understand what I am saying" to tackle questions such as "how does the act of communicating change, or even define, who I am?", "why do organizations that seem to be saying similar things achieve very different results?" and "to what extent are my relationships with others affected by our various organizational contexts?" In the early 1990s Peter Senge developed new theories on Organizational Communication. These theories were learning organization and systems thinking. These have been well received and are now a mainstay in current beliefs toward organizational communications.
[edit] Communication networks

Networks are another aspect of direction and flow of communication. Bavelas has shown that communication patterns, or networks, influence groups in several important ways. Communication networks may affect the group's completion of the assigned task on time, the position of the de facto leader in the group, or they may affect the group members' satisfaction from occupying certain positions in the network. Although these findings are based on laboratory experiments, they have important implications for the dynamics of communication in formal organizations.

There are several patterns of communication:
    

"Chain", "Wheel", "Star", "All-Channel" network, "Circle".[2]

The Chain can readily be seen to represent the hierarchical pattern that characterizes strictly formal information flow, "from the top down," in military and some types of business organizations. The Wheel can be compared with a typical autocratic organization, meaning one-man rule and limited employee participation. The Star is similar to the basic formal structure of many organizations. The All-Channel network, which is an elaboration of Bavelas's Circle used by Guetzkow, is analogous to the free-flow of communication in a group that encourages all of its members to become involved in group decision processes. The All-Channel network may also be compared to some of the informal communication networks. If it's assumed that messages may move in both directions between stations in the networks, it is easy to see that some individuals occupy key positions with regard to the number of messages they handle and the degree to which they exercise control over the flow of information. For example, the person represented by the central dot in the "Star" handles all messages in the group. In contrast, individuals who occupy stations at the edges of the pattern handle fewer messages and have little or no control over the flow of information.These "peripheral" individuals can communicate with only one or two other persons and must depend entirely on others to relay their messages if they wish to extend their range. In reporting the results of experiments involving the Circle, Wheel, and Star configurations, Bavelas came to the following tentative conclusions. In patterns with positions located centrally, such as the Wheel and the Star, an organization quickly develops around the people occupying these central positions. In such patterns, the organization is more stable and errors in performance are lower than in patterns having a lower degree of centrality, such as the Circle. However, he also found that the morale of members in high centrality patterns is relatively low. Bavelas speculated that this lower morale could, in the long run, lower the accuracy and speed of such networks. In problem solving requiring the pooling of data and judgments, or "insight," Bavelas suggested that the ability to evaluate partial results, to look at alternatives, and to restructure problems fell off rapidly when one person was able to assume a more central (that is, more controlling) position in the information flow. For example, insight into a problem requiring change would be less in the Wheel

and the Star than in the Circle or the Chain because of the "bottlenecking" effect of data control by central members. It may be concluded from these laboratory results that the structure of communications within an organization will have a significant influence on the accuracy of decisions, the speed with which they can be reached, and the satisfaction of the people involved. Consequently, in networks in which the responsibility for initiating and passing along messages is shared more evenly among the members, the better the group's morale in the long run.

[edit] Direction of communication
If it's considered formal communications as they occur in traditional military organizations, messages have a "one-way" directional characteristic. In the military organization, the formal communication proceeds from superior to subordinate, and its content is presumably clear because it originates at a higher level of expertise and experience. Military communications also carry the additional assumption that the superior is responsible for making his communication clear and understandable to his subordinates. This type of organization assumes that there is little need for twoway exchanges between organizational levels except as they are initiated by a higher level. Because messages from superiors are considered to be more important than those from subordinates, the implicit rule is that communication channels, except for prescribed information flows, should not be cluttered by messages from subordinates but should remain open and free for messages moving down the chain of command. "Juniors should be seen and not heard," is still an unwritten, if not explicit, law of military protocol. Vestiges of one-way flows of communication still exist in many formal organizations outside the military, and for many of the same reasons as described above. Although management recognizes that prescribed information must flow both downward and upward, managers may not always be convinced that two-wayness should be encouraged. For example, to what extent is a subordinate free to communicate to his superior that he understands or does not understand a message? Is it possible for him to question the superior, ask for clarification, suggest modifications to instructions he has received, or transmit unsolicited messages to his superior, which are not prescribed by the rules? To what extent does the oneway rule of direction affect the efficiency of communication in the organization, in addition to the morale and motivation of subordinates? These are not merely procedural matters but include questions about the organizational climate, or psychological atmosphere in which communication takes place. Harold Leavitt has suggested a simple experiment that helps answer some of these questions.[3] А

group is assigned the task of re-creating on paper a set of rectangular figures, first as they are described by the leader under one-way conditions, and second as they are described by the leader under two-way conditions.(A different configuration of rectangles is used in the second trial.) In the one-way trial, the leader's back is turned to the group. He describes the rectangles as he sees them. No one in the group is allowed to ask questions and no one may indicate by any audible or visible sign his understanding or his frustration as he attempts to follow the leader's directions. In the two-way trial, the leader faces the group. In this case, the group may ask for clarifications on his description of the rectangles and he can not only see but also can feel and respond to the emotional reactions of group members as they try to re-create his instructions on paper. On the basis of a number of experimental trials similar to the one described above, Leavitt formed these conclusions:
1. One-way communication is faster than two-way communication. 2. Two-way communication is more accurate than one-way communication. 3. Receivers are more sure of themselves and make more correct judgments of how right or wrong they are in the two-way system. 4. The sender feels psychologically under attack in the two-way system, because his receivers pick up his mistakes and oversights and point them out to him. 5. The two-way method is relatively noisier and looks more disorderly. The one-way method, on the other hand, appears neat and efficient to an outside observer.[3]

Thus, if speed is necessary, if a businesslike appearance is important, if a manager does not want his mistakes recognized, and if he wants to protect his power, then one-way communication seems preferable. In contrast, if the manager wants to get his message across, or if he is concerned about his receivers' feeling that they are participating and are making a contribution, the twoway system is better.

[edit] Interpersonal communication
Main article: Interpersonal communication

Another facet of communication in the organization is the process of face-to-face or interpersonal communication, between individuals. Such communication may take several forms. Messages may be verbal (that is, expressed in words), or they may not involve words at all but consist of gestures, facial expressions, and certain postures ("body language"). Nonverbal messages may even stem from silence.[4]

Managers do not need answers to operate a successful business; they need questions. Answers can come from anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world thanks to the benefits of all the electronic communication tools at our disposal. This has turned the real job of management into determining what it is the business needs to know, along with the who/what/where/when and how of learning it. To effectively solve problems, seize opportunities, and achieve objectives, questions need to be asked by managers—these are the people responsible for the operation of the enterprise as a whole.[5] Ideally, the meanings sent are the meanings received. This is most often the case when the messages concern something that can be verified objectively. For example, "This piece of pipe fits the threads on the coupling." In this case, the receiver of the message can check the sender's words by actual trial, if necessary. However, when the sender's words describe a feeling or an opinion about something that cannot be checked objectively, meanings can be very unclear. "This work is too hard" or "Watergate was politically justified" are examples of opinions or feelings that cannot be verified. Thus they are subject to interpretation and hence to distorted meanings. The receiver's background of experience and learning may differ enough from that of the sender to cause significantly different perceptions and evaluations of the topic under discussion. As we shall see later, such differences form a basic barrier to communication.[4] Nonverbal content always accompanies the verbal content of messages. This is reasonably clear in the case of face-to-face communication. As Virginia Satir has pointed out, people cannot help but communicate symbolically (for example, through their clothing or possessions) or through some form of body language. In messages that are conveyed by the telephone, a messenger, or a letter, the situation or context in which the message is sent becomes part of its non-verbal content. For example, if the company has been losing money, and in a letter to the production division, the front office orders a reorganization of the shipping and receiving departments, this could be construed to mean that some people were going to lose their jobs — unless it were made explicitly clear that this would not occur.[6] A number of variables influence the effectiveness of communication. Some are found in the environment in which communication takes place, some in the personalities of the sender and the receiver, and some in the relationship that exists between sender and receiver. These different variables suggest some of the difficulties of communicating with understanding between two people. The sender wants to formulate an idea and communicate it to the receiver. This desire to communicate may arise from his thoughts or feelings or it may have been triggered by something in the environment. The communication may also be influenced by the

relationship between the sender and the receiver, such as status differences, a staff-line relationship, or a learner-teacher relationship.[6] Whatever its origin, information travels through a series of filters, both in the sender and in the receiver, and is affected by different channels, before the idea can be transmitted and re-created in the receiver's mind. Physical capacities to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch vary between people, so that the image of reality may be distorted even before the mind goes to work. In addition to physical or sense filters, cognitive filters, or the way in which an individual's mind interprets the world around him, will influence his assumptions and feelings. These filters will determine what the sender of a message says, how he says it, and with what purpose. Filters are present also in the receiver, creating a double complexity that once led Robert Louis Stevenson to say that human communication is "doubly relative". It takes one person to say something and another to decide what he said.[7] Physical and cognitive, including semantic filters (which decide the meaning of words) combine to form a part of our memory system that helps us respond to reality. In this sense, March and Simon compare a person to a data processing system. Behavior results from an interaction between a person's internal state and environmental stimuli. What we have learned through past experience becomes an inventory, or data bank, consisting of values or goals, sets of expectations and preconceptions about the consequences of acting one way or another, and a variety of possible ways of responding to the situation. This memory system determines what things we will notice and respond to in the environment. At the same time, stimuli in the environment help to determine what parts of the memory system will be activated. Hence, the memory and the environment form an interactive system that causes our behavior. As this interactive system responds to new experiences, new learnings occur which feed back into memory and gradually change its content. This process is how people adapt to a changing world.[7]

[edit] Communication Approaches in an Organization
Informal and Formal Communication are used in an organization. Informal communication, generally associated with interpersonal, horizontal communication, was primarily seen as a potential hindrance to effective organizational performance. This is no longer the case. Informal communication has become more important to ensuring the effective conduct of work in modern organizations.

Top-down approach: This is also known as downward communication. This approach is used by the Top Level Management to communicate to the lower levels. This is used to implement policies, gudelines, etc. In this type of organizational communication, distortion of the actual information occurs. This could be made effective by feedbacks.

[edit] Research in organizational communication
[edit] Research methodologies

Historically, organizational communication was driven primarily by quantitative research methodologies. Included in functional organizational communication research are statistical analyses (such as surveys, text indexing, network mapping and behavior modeling). In the early 1980s, the interpretive revolution took place in organizational communication. In Putnam and Pacanowsky's 1983 text Communication and Organizations: An Interpretive Approach. they argued for opening up methodological space for qualitative approaches such as narrative analyses, participantobservation, interviewing, rhetoric and textual approaches readings) and philosophic inquiries. During the 1980s and 1990s critical organizational scholarship began to gain prominence with a focus on issues of gender, race, class, and power/knowledge. In its current state, the study of organizational communication is open methodologically, with research from post-positive, interpretive, critical, postmodern, and discursive paradigms being published regularly. Organizational communication scholarship appears in a number of communication journals including but not limited to Management Communication Quarterly, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Communication Monographs, Academy of Management Journal, Communication Studies, and Southern Communication Journal. New ways for scholars to communicating within an organization by bring in a postcolonial perspective. In recent years, Other voices are beginning to be recorded in organizational communication, especially in areas such as gender (e.g., see Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004; Mumby, 1993), race (e.g., see Ashcraft & Allen, 2003), and globalization (e.g., see Stohl, 2001). In fact, in a deeply reflexive article, ―Thinking Differently About Organizational Communication,‖[[George Cheney (2000) says that ―taking difference seriously means not only allowing the Other to speak but also being open to the possibility that the Other’s

perspective may come to influence or even supplant your own‖ (p. 140). Yet,despite such interventions, one key aspect in the dynamics of identity has not received much attention in organizational communication—postcolonial subjectivity and the mestiza consciousness born of being in the borderlands. Anzaldúa’s concept of mestiza consciousness transcends the nature of blackand-white theorizing and looks at issues of identity as multiple coexisting levels of subjectivities. The complex intersections between multiple subjectivities of issues of race, gender, class, ethnicity, and language remain underhighlighted in much of organizational communication scholarship and, yet, these are central to becoming sensitive to a postcolonial vision of our disciplinary future. In terms of imagining a postcolonial rationality, Harvard-based, Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen draws on his multiple subjectivities to turn traditional utility theory economics on its head and argue instead for a more humane welfare economics—a body of scholarship that has grown from his own subjective experiences of famines caused by colonial policies in pre-independence India (Sen, 1981, 1987). For Sen (1992), it is not enough to talk about achieving equality in income distribution, for such a rhetoric of equality conceals the ―substantive inequalities in, say, wellbeing and freedom arising out of such a distribution given the disparate personal and social circumstances of each individual‖ (p. 30). At this point, it would be easy to think that concerns with postcolonial subjectivity, organizing, voice, and rationality rest fully within the empirical domain of our disciplinary partners of sociology, anthropology, literature,political science, economics, and history, to name a few. Banerjee and Linstead (2004), in fact, note that explicit political agendas, such as that of postcolonial thought, have never rested easily in organization studies. Few studies using a postcolonial frame exist and many are included in an edited volume by Anshuman Prasad (2003) entitled Postcolonial Theory and Organizational Analysis. As Prasad (2003) makes clear, a postcolonial perspective can be productive in exposing neocolonial assumptions underlying management disciplines, describing neocolonialism as a continuationof Western colonialism through political, economic, and cultural control(Banerjee & Linstead, 2004). When we as scholars unthinkingly adopt the discourse and knowledge of mainstream Euro-American organizational communication scholarship,we potentially absorb, without reflection, a particular way of understanding the world. In conclusion, what we are trying to imagine here and what can be seen in the exemplars above is a form of ―writing back to the center,‖where scholars from the disciplinary and epistemic margins

of organizational communication write about their own cultured forms of organizing practices,using their experiences and ways of knowing to talk back to, reframe, contextualize,and perhaps even reinterpret commonly used theories and concepts within our field. For those scholars, living and working in Asia, Africa,South America, or the Asia-Pacific region, for example, this means learning from and supporting the multiple forms of cultural knowledge around organizing and communicating that are native to their region. Disseminating work by native scholars of their contexts using native forms of knowing diversifies the field of organizational communication as well as the knowledge produced and consumed there, providing all members of our scholarly community with a richer array of concepts, methods, forms, and perspectives from which to understand our increasingly complex and globalized reality. In engaging in such an enterprise, we begin to reimagine the scholarly community of organizational communication as a transdisciplinary and transgeographical entity capable of disrupting contemporary hierarchies of knowledge and making sense of our flattening world. With this goal in mind, we request and look forward to lively conversations with scholars from within the traditionally defined discipline of organizational communication as well as those outside, as we work together to recognize, support, and engage diverse voices and contexts as well as multiple ways of organizing and communicating. References: Ashcraft, K. (2006). Falling from a humble perch? Rereading organizational communication studies with an attitude of alliance. Management Communication Quarterly, 19(4), 645–652. Ashcraft, K., & Allen, B. (2003). Cheney, G. (2000). Thinking differently about organizational communication: Why, how, and where? Management Communication Quarterly, 14(1), 132–141. Sen, A. (1981). Poverty and famines: An essay on entitlement and deprivation. Oxford, UK: Clarendon. Sen, A. (1987). On ethics and economics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Sen, A. (1992). Inequality reexamined. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Banerjee, S. B., & Linstead, S. (2004). Masking subversion: Neocolonial embeddedness in anthropological accounts of indigenous management. Human Relations, 57(2), 221–247.

[edit] Current Research Topics in Organizational Communication
The field of organizational communication has moved from acceptance of mechanistic models (e.g., information moving from a sender to a receiver) to a study of the persistent, hegemonic and taken-for-granted ways in which we not only use communication to accomplish certain tasks within organizational settings (e.g., public

speaking) but also how the organizations in which we participate affect us. These approaches include "postmodern", "critical", "participatory", "feminist", "power/political", "organic", etc. and adds to disciplines as wide-ranging as sociology, philosophy, theology, psychology, business, business administration, institutional management, medicine (health communication), neurology (neural nets), semiotics, anthropology, international relations, and music. Currently, some topics of research and theory in the field are: Constitution, e.g.,
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how communicative behaviors construct or modify organizing processes or products how the organizations within which we interact affect our communicative behaviors, and through these, our own identities structures other than organizations which might be constituted through our communicative activity (e.g., markets, cooperatives, tribes, political parties, social movements) when does something "become" an organization? When does an organization become (an)other thing(s)? Can one organization "house" another? Is the organization still a useful entity/thing/concept, or has the social/political environment changed so much that what we now call "organization" is so different from the organization of even a few decades ago that it cannot be usefully tagged with the same word – "organization"?

Narrative, e.g.,
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how do group members employ narrative to acculturate/initiate/indoctrinate new members? do organizational stories act on different levels? Are different narratives purposively invoked to achieve specific outcomes, or are there specific roles of "organizational storyteller"? If so, are stories told by the storyteller received differently than those told by others in the organization? in what ways does the organization attempt to influence storytelling about the organization? under what conditions does the organization appear to be more or less effective in obtaining a desired outcome? when these stories conflict with one another or with official rules/policies, how are the conflicts worked out? in situations in which alternative accounts are available, who or how or why are some accepted and others rejected?

Identity, e.g.,
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who do we see ourselves to be, in terms of our organizational affiliations?

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do communicative behaviors or occurrences in one or more of the organizations in which we participate effect changes in us? To what extent do we consist of the organizations to which we belong? is it possible for individuals to successfully resist organizational identity? what would that look like? do people who define themselves by their work-organizational membership communicate differently within the organizational setting than people who define themselves more by an avocational (non-vocational) set of relationships? for example, researchers have studied how human service workers and firefighters use humor at their jobs as a way to affirm their identity in the face of various challenges Tracy, S.J.; K. K. Myers; C. W. Scott (2006). "Cracking Jokes and Crafting Selves: Sensemaking and Identity Management Among Human Service Workers". Communication Monographs 73 (3): 283–308. doi:10.1080/03637750600889500.. Others have examined the identities of police organizations, prison guards, and professional women workers.

Interrelatedness of organizational experiences, e.g.,
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how do our communicative interactions in one organizational setting affect our communicative actions in other organizational settings? how do the phenomenological experiences of participants in a particular organizational setting effect changes in other areas of their lives? when the organizational status of a member is significantly changed (e.g., by promotion or expulsion) how are their other organizational memberships affected? what kind of future relationship between business and society does organizational communication seem to predict?

Power e.g.,
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how does the use of particular communicative practices within an organizational setting reinforce or alter the various interrelated power relationships within the setting? Are the potential responses of those within or around these organizational settings constrained by factors or processes either within or outside of the organization – (assuming there is an "outside"? do taken-for-granted organizational practices work to fortify the dominant hegemonic narrative? Do individuals resist/confront these practices, through what actions/agencies, and to what effects? do status changes in an organization (e.g., promotions, demotions, restructuring, financial/social strata changes) change communicative behavior? Are there criteria employed by organizational members to differentiate between "legitimate"

(i.e., endorsed by the formal organizational structure) and "illegitimate" (i.e., opposed by or unknown to the formal power structure)? Are behaviors? When are they successful, and what do we even there "pretenders" or "usurpers" who employ these communicativemean by "successful?"

meeting-minutes-examples

Contents
[hide]
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1 Meeting minutes o 1.1 The Problem o 1.2 Participants o 1.3 Real-World Examples  1.3.1 Gene Ontology Consortium  1.3.2 Stevens Hospital Board  1.3.3 PHP Developers Meeting  1.3.4 GNOME/Mozilla Meeting  1.3.5 ICANN Executive Committee o 1.4 Existing Practices o 1.5 Existing Formats o 1.6 Proposal o 1.7 See Also

Meeting minutes
They're typed, they look good, but all the meaning (participants, decisions, action items, etc.) is impossible to glean automatically. Enter hMinutes (or whatever)!

The Problem
Meeting notes provide a wealth of semantic content, invaluable to organizations. Meeting notes are routinely recorded in intranets, and (with public organizations) on the internet; however, without semantic content it is very difficult to extract the specific information, analyze it, distribute it, or search it effectively. This investigation seeks to document how meeting minutes on the web are structured, towards a lightweight suite of microformats and format extensions for markup.

Participants
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Brush

Real-World Examples
These are fairly random, selected for variety of approach. Research is not yet in-depth. Room for more!
Gene Ontology Consortium
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Abbreviated organization name Dates Location (locality, region) Next meeting date/location (to be confirmed) Participants o Listed by group-affiliation o Names in comma-delimited parentheses o Some groups not represented, still listed (like regrets) Nested outline of items (XOXO!) Major topic -> subsidiary topic o Includes introduction, by named presenter(s) o Discussion item list  Detailed (but flat) following of arguments pro and con  Identified conclusions (decisions? not formal?)  Certain items or references id specific people o Action items  listed after each topic  assigned to a person (or to "everyone")  Also summarized at end of minutes  Previous action items listed, with status:  done  unresolvable  in progress  almost done  other details, etc. o Brainstorm section Next meetings: o Types o Dates o Locations

Stevens Hospital Board
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Organization, committee Date Time start/end Kind of meeting (ie. special meeting, as opposed to regular) Present, with roles: o member/non-member o President/Secretary o organizational affiliations o also plurally generic (ie. "Hospital Managers and citizens

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from the community, SEIU 1199NW delegation") Outline list (flat) of items o "Call to order" o "Oath of office" (ie. establishment of new official roles for individuals) o Approval of previous minutes (special form of decision) o Reports from managers/committees o Authorizations for expenditures o "Other business" o Public comment o Adjournment Decisions included in text of items o motion made o seconded o approved unanimously o included appointments to committees (changes in roles?) Items include one, sometimes more specifically referenced speakers

PHP Developers Meeting
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Includes relatively unhelpful presentation-oriented table-ofcontents link outline markup (more detail?) Title Date Location Attendees o Affiliation High-level item o Includes one-sentence summary Second-level item o Issue o Discussion o Conclusion(s)  Not clear distinction between decisions and action items  Some action items attached to specific people

GNOME/Mozilla Meeting
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Title (included two participating organizations) Date (Email, so "date sent out" included implicitly) Attendance o Organizational affiliation o minutes o chair Regrets Actions (list) Discussion (list tree, no titles)

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Specific items inside each discussion item refer to specific person(s) Follow pros and cons of arguments

ICANN Executive Committee
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Organization and committee form of meeting (ie. teleconference) Date Time start/end Attendance (noted that all were present throughout) with roles: o member of committee o member and chair o non-member, board secretary o non-member, general counsel XOXO-like outline of items "Resolved:" decisions for each item. o vote count (ie. 4-0) o who proposed o who seconded Also included items deferred to later meetings

Existing Practices
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Summary of common patterns discovered: An informal "80/20" analysis of most commonly used elements: o 80% used items are mostly extremely common:  Title (organization/committee name, sometimes location)  Date (time is fairly common as well)  Participants (almost always include specific notation of Chair and Secretary, regrets also really common)  Point list of topics  Often flat, but also often nested  Some models (specifically formal meetings) have clear, regular division of kinds of topics (eg. reports from committees, approval of minutes, old business, new business, public comment, etc.)  Decisions (usually include description of how vote broke down, movers, seconders, etc.)  Action items (who assigned to; sometimes status review, date due, etc.)  Next meeting(s) - fairly common o The 20% portion is primarily specific kinds of topic divisions, specific categories of participants, categories of meetings (special, regular, business, ...), etc. These could be standardized for certain sets of applications without writing into the uformat per se.

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Other attempts to solve The Problem: Does anyone have references to other schemae attempted to address this issue? How about a semantically marked up implementation!? o All W3C meetings are recorded, as a matter of policy. There are zillions of teleconference and ftf meeting records. See MeetingRecords in the ESW wiki for notes, patterns, and tools, especially the scribe.perl tool, Zakim, and RRSAgent. -DanC o The W3C tools assume the following structure, near as I can tell: (DanC, more advice?) (I've eliminated IRCspecific details)  Meeting: title  Chair: name  Scribe: name  Agenda: URL of agenda - agendas are automatically formed using various tools, and are essentially a flat list of agenda items  Present: comma-delimited list of names  Regrets: pre-announced non-attendees  Date: yup  Topic: next in a flat list of agendums; topic name seems to often be (I think) in a well-formed format for reference to a centrally kept list (RDF or other?)  Action: list, of, names to description of action [STATUS]  Status is optional  May be DONE, PENDING, DROPPED, with other synonyms  Again, this is well-tracked between meetings for the purpose of providing open action item lists  Resolved: description of decision made o The vCard spec includes a definition for vTodo. I'm assuming that iCal-basic and hCalendar don't already include this part of the spec, so it could become the basis to an extension of the hCalendar uformat (or a new hTodo?) that defines action items. (Action item management is a core focus of the W3C technical tools above.) This would be integrated into hMinutes.

Existing Formats
See meeting-minutes-formats for current standards for publishing meeting-minutes. NOTE: This research should be done before brainstorming proposals. Does anyone have ideas? Besides some brainstorming at W3C, haven't found any current standards.

Proposal
Moved to meeting-minutes-brainstorming. It is probably better to first:
1. analyze what are the 80/20 common elements of the examples above. Done, at least initially. 2. complete the research of meeting-minutes-formats. Any other ideas on this? 3. and then go about proposing a solution for the whole format, rather than parts of it, while attempting to reuse other microformats as much as possible

An organized meeting needs a well written agenda. Use these steps for your team call also. Remind your team to not be using their cell phone or their computer during the meeting, even on team calls. Before you start the meeting make sure they are prepared to take notes. This is also very important when you are at the agency meetings and new agent training.

Edit Steps
1. 1 Start preparation well in advance. It will show if you rush the agenda - you're likely to forget things or to put things in the wrong order.

Start preparation well in advance.

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Demonstrate your production and inventory skills with APICS CPIM. www.apics.org/certification 2. 2 If you are having special guests attending the meeting, find out whether they have any issues that can be combined because they are related, similar, or even the same in terms of means or ends. If so, arrange them under one agenda item. Organize the order events according to time and importance. If something really needs to be discussed urgently or as a matter of priority, you may wish to put it near the top of the agenda so you can be certain you will get to it in the course of the meeting. Some people like to put things that take a lot of time near the top of the agenda, so that they can be certain they will be able to talk at length about them. Others prefer to put such items near the bottom as it means that discussion on these topics won't push other items off the agenda and discussion that does occur will be forced to be succinct; it's your call dependent on the topic. It may take a little trial and error to decide on an organization style you like.

If you are having special guests attending the meeting, find out whether they have any issues that can be combined because they are related, similar, or even the same in terms of means or ends. 3. 3

Check the agenda for errors. Doing so reflects on your attention to detail and care for your position. It also prevents people being distracted by minor errors or by making points of order about errors.

Check the agenda for errors. 4. 4 Print the agenda or email it to all attendees. You should do this as near to the actual meeting as possible. If emailing, only do so if this has been agreed to by prior arrangement and always have spare paper copies up your sleeve at the meeting. Someone always forgets to bring a printed copy!

Print the agenda or email it to all attendees.

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If your company has a special form for agendas, use this form as a template. For some places, it is essential to stick to the formula. Depending what your colleagues prefer, it might be worth keeping to a deadline for people suggesting ideas to add to the agenda. Name a cut-off date and time, and stick to it. Allow for amendments where these enhance the agenda or are simply a case of events overriding your original agenda. If somebody cannot make the meeting, consider creating an "Advance Apologies" section at the top of the agenda, or leave a space for this and simply announce them during the meeting. An excellent tool for having a productive meeting is using "OARR": Objectives, Agenda, Roles & Responsibilities. First, your meeting should have an objective. If you are having a meeting to just impart information, don't waste people's time with a meeting. Send them a newsletter. The objective should have an active component and if possible, a product to show for it: "Determine the quarterly goals for the team". The agenda is a list of the topics you'll address to get to that objective, with a time limit to keep you on track. For example "1. Review the status of last quarter's goals (15 minutes), 2. Round-table suggestions for goals (20 minutes), 3. Pick top 5 goals (10 minutes), etc.) For Roles and Responsibilities, determine who is running the meeting, who is keeping notes, and who will assign actions/"to do" items resulting from the meeting.

Below is an example of a Agenda. Please feel free to adopt ad change to meet your clubs needs. The club secretary may write the agenda for meetings in consultation with the Chairperson. It is their role to set what will be covered in the meeting.

There will be a meeting of the ................................. Committee at .......................(place) on ...................(date) ................... (time) Welcome Apologies for absence Minutes - to approve the minutes of the previous meeting Matters arising to consider any matters arising otherwise included on the agenda Financial reports Review a report on the current financial position To make any decisions regarding, fees, expenses, payments etc. Consideration of reports from Officers and sub-committees General Business Administrative business, including consideration of statutory matters (e.g. Date for AGM) Agenda of next meeting Minutes:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Which meeting was it? What was its purpose? When did it take place? Who attended? (Who did not?) Which topics were discussed? Which important points were made? Which decisions were made? Which actions were agreed upon? Who will complete them? By when? 9. Which topics were tabled for the future? 10. Which materials were distributed? Where are copies available? 11. Is a follow-up meeting scheduled? When? Where? For what purpose?