Commentary -- Cultural Obstacles to Effective Communication

We are communicating more than ever, if you believe the business press and Internet revolution hype. But, as in most things, more is rarely better. In fact, we are communicating less than ever before. Communication is not just the transfer of information but the primary means of facilitating interactions between individuals and groups. Impersonal e-mail hardly touches this critical function. Most non-electronic communication still suffers from traditional ills and obstacles — among which, culture can dominate.

Information transfer is not communication, except perhaps to some technical specialists. For most of us, communication is at least as much about human interactions as it is about content. Small talk is an example — virtually without content but often critical in establishing and maintaining productive relationships. Business meetings, despised by most, also serve relationships as much as or often more than they serve to transfer information.

This is why telecommuting rarely involves true communication — it only handles the information transfer part.

Today's frantic and tightly-linked business environment demands more frequent and effective communication. So how do we respond? With e-mail, and now, teleconferencing — both of which serve mainly to transfer information. The human part of communication is barely touched. Relationships weaken or are not adequately established. Isolation results, even among people in adjacent cubes. Miscommunication occurs because there is no opportunity to establish a common working language in social situations. Meetings are needed to resolve disputes between non-communicators. Barriers arise as small groups that do communicate in the broader sense are isolated from other islands of more complete communication.

An organization's culture reflects the people in it, particularly those at the top. Hiring and promotion decisions are strongly culture-driven in most organizations, ensuring that top-level culture is strongly represented almost everywhere. GE is perhaps the best known example of a strong, top-driven business culture. As for the impact of culture on communication, just think about how culture impacts not just the personality types who are hired and promoted but how culture guides nearly every interaction among employees. A collegial culture (Xerox, Kodak) stresses cooperation and tolerance. An aggressive culture (Motorola, Microsoft) fosters confrontation and air-time. Some culture impact is productive, if not very warm and fuzzy (GE). But culture can create pockets of dysfunction, communication being among the most common victims.

A strong culture of any kind tends to perpetuate itself, even after the culture source — typically a powerful, charismatic leader — disappears. Hiring and promotion decisions bring in compatible personalities, people who "fit". Some organizations are obsessive about this (GE, for example). The result is a staff of similar personalities. If the culture is aggressive in nature, then it will tend toward outspoken, confrontational, impatient personalities. Unless the organization is purged of personalities other than this (GE, again), the personality-type minorities will have difficulty communicating in both information transfer and relationship-building aspects. An aggressive type of person will face similar problems in a collegial culture. If your organization has no well-defined culture, then you are likely to have islands with a number of culture extremes. Culture islands with a dominant personality type will have problems communicating effectively with islands of a different culture. Sound a bit tribal?

It gets worse. Communication within operating groups can also be crippled by cultural factors. Many organizations stress teamwork and cooperation to such an extent that information challenging the mainstream is unwelcome. Those mavericks who persist in this practice are tagged as poor team players and may soon be gone. Shy or inarticulate people in a confrontational culture may find a similar obstacle to communication. Unwilling to subject their ideas to a hostile reception, these individuals may simply keep their knowledge to themselves. Some supervisors and managers actively suppress information that does not present their group in a favorable light or contradicts the current group consensus (often manager-driven). Some groups reject communication from certain individuals in the group because of biases and personal traits (sloppy appearance, opinionated, know-it-all). Others are reluctant to hear about certain topics, such as product deficiencies, because such problems are not in the group's working charter.

Organizational "silos" are an established analogy in management jargon, referring of course to communication barriers between business units. Normally, the term describes system and process barriers but culture can create barriers just as easily. Organizations implementing customer relationship management (CRM) systems that facilitate communication between units and eliminate barriers often find that silo problems are just diminished, not removed. Why? The barrier may be cultural and largely unaffected by impersonal systems and processes. A sales culture has trouble communicating with back office and service cultures. An engineering culture may despise marketing for cultural reasons. If you have more than one visible culture in your organization, you have silos. Bet on it.

Sounds pretty grim, doesn't it? If culture is embedded in the organization's people and management, how can you do much about it, short of major people recycling (GE's very effective approach)? Lots. Here are a few ideas:

¤ Not all culture-based obstacles are creating costs or depriving the organization of vital knowledge. Step one is finding out where culture-created costs are being generated and where valuable knowledge is being blocked.

¤ Think about creating a separate, culture-free communication channel that is accessible by all employees. The channel must have an effective action back-end or it will soon be ignored.

¤ Identify people who face culture-created communication obstacles and consider reassigning them to more compatible groups, pairing them with peers who are effective communicators, providing them with special training in dealing with such obstacles, and encouraging supervisors to make a special effort to help them communicate.

¤ Ask employees about problems they may be having with communication in any of their working activities. Do this confidentially, perhaps using a neutral party, to encourage candor and specifics.

¤ Provide opportunities for cultural exchanges between your tribes and your silos. Move people across tribal and silo boundaries for temporary assignments. Create joint problem-solving activities.

¤ Identify tribal leaders and silo-builders. Consider reassigning them or pairing them with a person adept at breaking down barriers. Break up their group to narrow their sphere of influence.

These should suggest many other approaches. The majority of culture-based obstacles can at least be minimized and quite a few can be eliminated entirely.

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