Unfortunately the old management model in many organizations, where you know when “you need to know,” still rules. It’s a paternalistic, arrogant and outmoded way of thinking where management makes assumptions about the motivations, desires and actions of employees.

It’s also related to the prevailing management view (in some circles) that employees are simply assets to be deployed, used up and disposed of as necessary. Forget the notion of investing in employees. It’s amazing how many organizations hypocritically preach the “new way” yet continually operate in the old ways. I think it’s a generational thing. Hopefully that attitude will move on as older generations of management retire.

When you really analyze the problems most organizations have, be it a church, government, charity or business, communication is usually at the heart of its problems. When information is currency, the more you have, the more you perceive yourself to be worth and the less you may want to dole it out.

Having a free flow of information in any organization is really a utopian ideal anyway. You’ll never find an organization where anything can be expressed and it will be received in an accepting, non-judgmental manner. Unfortunately humans haven’t evolved to this level yet.

Speaking from experience, I would say that all the dysfunctional organizations I’ve worked for in the past have had major communications issues. It’s virtually impossible to communicate openly in a one way manner in such organizations. You just never know how what you say is being taken and so everyone has a tendency to not say much until everything explodes one day. This further compounds communications problems and employees learn that saying anything more than you have to is probably not a good idea. CYA (cover your ass) is the main operating principle at these types of organizations.

It’s a rare organization that has open communication. I wonder, can any organization really can have truly open communication?

Do you really want to hear from your boss?

“Sorry Bill, I’d meet with you today but I’m in a bad mood since I discovered my wife’s sleeping with the pool boy and it’s made worse because my girlfriend’s lousy cooking gave me diarrhea.”

Probably not. (Sounds like I should be writing commercial scripts.)

So, maybe completely open is out, but on organizational matters, open internal communication is definitely an ideal to strive for. I’m always surprised by the attitude of management at many organizations where they don’t believe employees need to know much of anything that’s not immediately related to their jobs.

I believe in empowering employees to make decisions. I also believe that, outside of sociopaths, you can rely on employees to make good decisions. You just need to let them do it. Of course they need to have the proper training to begin with, but once that’s done, why not take a load off your mind and let them do their job?

I won’t go listing examples of the hilarious and stupid examples of poor communications I’ve run across (right now), but there are many! And there have been times in the past where I haven’t been a shining example of good communication either. Live and learn!

Got any funny or scary communications stories that you want to share?

And thanks to Tamara Stecyk for inspiring this blog post.