'Communication' for really, really busy managers.

Every manager knows that communication is central to her/his job. We're taught it in B-school, and it was drilled into us way-back when we were still wet behind the ears.

What they didn't tell us was what the impact of good communication would be.

Did you know though, that a management team that is (uniformly) a group of great communicators links to a 29.5% market value premium of their company? Or, that companies with better organizational communicationl earned shareholder value 50% better than industry peers.

Watson Wyatt, in an '06 report, goes so far to say that communication is a central key to employee engagement, itself a leading indicator of market value.

Yet rotten communication persists.

We see it when branch offices are 'out of the loop' for months on corporate initiatives, or one or more departments are apparently marching to their own drummer when it comes to service, safety, or other items of strategic importance.

It's so common, that as consumers, we've become agile enough (or is it just patient enough?) to navigate around many company's service policies just to complete basic transactions (such as servicing our cars).

As managers, we can improve the communication in our organization, by:

• Recognizing the critical nature of communication to the bottom line, and personally committing to improving our skills, discipline, and focus in this area
• Position company communications to our employees through the filters of what they're interested in hearing:

- provide a clear line of sight to your company's strategy, so that your employees know how their work affects the 'big picture' and how the big picture affects their work

- provide knowledge so that your employees can affect their performance within this context

- provide recognition, guidance, and accountability, so that your employees know that their effort matters

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