Business and Communication

Every single interaction within a business, regardless of its importance, must be conveyed via the medium of writing or through speech. This fact is so self evident to be essentially axiomatic. If you were to reflect upon the transactions of the past week, you will see that that is so. For now, let us look toward the future, and not the past, for this is where the fortune of our business is to be determined. Each future transaction, both the trifling and the critical, must be lead through this tenuous phase of communication, and must obtain agreement if it is to go forward.

It is a mistake to think that even the greatest and most logical courses of action will win acquiescence on the soundness of the proposition alone. Even in the business whose motto is that figures cannot lie, many a bank of imposing resources is gradually being caught up with by an institution whose balance sheets show much smaller figures, but whose directing officer has a warm hand-clasp and a human way of discussing financial problems that make men bring their banking business to him. Every business man, whether he would or not, must be a salesman, and the medium of salesmanship is language, the world's code of signals.

This sentiment is reflected perfectly in the first lines of Mr Brinston's much loved work on the use of charts and other graphical devices in conveying facts. I paraphrase him herein:

After a person has collected data and studies a proposition with great care so that his own mind is made up as to the best solution for the problem, he is apt to feel that his work is about completed. Usually, however, when his own mind is made up, his task is only half done. The larger and more difficult part of the work is to convince the minds of others that the proposed solution is the best one that all the recommendations are really necessary. Time after time it happens that some ignorant or presumptuous member of a committee or a board of directors will upset the carefully thought-out plan of a man who knows the facts, simply because the man with the facts cannot present his facts readily enough to overcome the opposition. It is often with impotent exasperation that a person having the knowledge sees some false conclusion accepted, or some wrong policy adopted, just because known facts cannot be marshalled and presented in such manner as to be effective.

For businesses to thrive and be successful, there must be a fast and reliable exchange of ideas and decisions within the organisation and to the outside world. It is, in some ways, similar to the chemical processes which occur within a living cell. The only way to guarantee the smooth and rapid flow of these ideas is to master and control the communication channels that exist within the concern and between individuals.

We refer to money as the means by which all transactions are conducted within an economy, by which the value of all things are noted and measured. In the same way, it is true that the commodity of human relations is communication. Every thought must be carefully formed into words before it can be understandable to others.

Reverse Number Lookup Information carries more articles by Sammy Beanard, who works in the telephone reverse lookup market.