Communication

Communications Gaps: Why They’re Happening

CCook

Every business faces issues with communication at some point. As technology changes, and time passes, it’s easy to think we’re communicating better than ever, when in fact we’re barely getting the message across in an environment constantly cluttering peoples’ attention with notifications and messaging.

HR professionals, business owners, operations managers – you see it every day. You are dealing with problems, preventable errors, frustrations, conflict… and it’s wasting a ton of time.

We get it. As communication experts, we help our clients through these challenges and we’ve seen some common reasons why these problems emerge. In fact, there are three things that seem to be contributing to communication gaps in businesses just like yours:

1. You aren’t capturing their attention.

While there are more ways to communicate with your team than ever before, you also have more competition for their attention. People get hundreds of notifications every day from their devices and are often operating on information overload. When that’s the case, it can be hard to figure out which messages are the ones that deserve our attention.

This problem tends to be most glaring in industries that are still using paper bulletin boards and memos to try to get the word out. In the digital age, the data suggests you simply have to be highly visible and digital to grab someone’s eye. [OAAA]

2. You’re only saying something once.

Because the communication landscape is flooded, repetition is critical to getting out a message. A lot of the failure in this process seems to stem primarily from a lack of automation.

3. You’re not communicating in a memorable way.

Our brain responds differently to visually captivating imagery than it does to static text. Study after study reveals this conclusion: in almost every corporate setting, to communicate properly you need to leverage the power of visuals and tell your story with words and images or video.

Here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be this way!

You don’t have to be spending your time retracing your steps to address communication gaps. You can do better – your business can be better.

We actually have a lot to say on this matter – so much so, in fact, that we wrote an entire manifesto on the matter. This white paper outlines why communication gaps are so prevalent, what’s contributing to them in your business, and – most importantly – what you can do about it.

And, you can access it for free right here, simply because we want to see your business communicate better – no strings attached.

Colleen Cook

Colleen Cook

Colleen Cook works full-time as the Director of Operations at Vinyl Marketing in Ashland, Ohio, where she resides with her husband Mike and three young daughters. She's an insatiable extrovert who enjoys finding reasons to gather people.