Have you ever felt like you’re playing a game of telephone in your business except that what comes out on the other side of the chain isn’t a funny phrase, but a distorted product and twisted timeline?
Playing telephone might have been fun as a kid sending lighthearted messages through a string of friends just for amusement, but it is not fun as a business owner. When it comes to your business, direct and uncomplicated is the desirable method of communication.
Do you have access to talk directly with the people at each stage of your product development and production? If not, how many people does your message have to pass through to reach the person it needs to? The more people in the communication string, the more likely the original message will get misheard and distorted from its original intent.
In the game of business telephone, the miscommunication usually isn’t intentional. (Let’s believe that that friend’s little brother who purposefully changed the phrase half way through the game has grown up now.) However, the message can still get twisted without a direct conversation where any vague aspects can be clarified in real time.
Have you been burned by bad communication before? When you found a more direct path of communication, how did that affect your business?