To be effective communicator, a communication program must meet the following requirements:

Express the needs and character of the organization

It makes a difference whether the company is small or large, old or new, manufacturing or retailing, centralized or decentralized, union or nonunion. It makes very great difference whether the company has a tradition of secrecy or freedom of information, of authoritarianism or democracy. Every communication is judged in the context of a company's traditions and practices. That is why it is so risky to copy someone else's communication program, no matter how successful it was.

Communication grows best in a climate of trust and confidence

Managements that have a record of keeping faith with their employees, reporting the facts honestly, and listening sincerely don't have to depend upon high-pressure indoctrination or slick handouts. An employees knowledge that he has free access to information is more important than any specific information we can give him.

Communication should form an integral part of each executive's job

Though personnel specialists can advise the line and administer a program of formal communication, each executive is responsible for maintaining clear and consistent communication with his associates. This is one responsibility that he cannot delegate.

Communication must be a containing program, not a brief campaign

It is not a cure for sudden illnesses, but a day-in, day-out way of managing or supervising people. We must not, like the famous blind men who reconstructed the whole elephant from a single part, identify the whole communication with one of its devices. Exploitation of one particular medium will often create more problems than it will solve. This is the lesson some companies have learned when, after a long history of indifference to employees' interests, they have begun an all-out drive to indoctrinate them on some particular subject.

Communication must be stimulated

Management must show an aggressive willingness to share information with his employees. It is not enough to correct misinformation or even to tell only what they have to know or what management thinks they should know. The proper starting point is to find out what employees are interested in hearing.

Communication must move freely in both directions

It is a commonplace today to emphasize that communication is a two-way street. In actual practice, however, management devotes far more attention to telling, informing, and commanding than it does to listening, asking and interpreting.

Communication must consider the manager's role

In building a bridge between top management and employees, we must never forget that the prime communicator is the manager. He is in the most critical position to interpret or maybe misinterpret the top management thinking.

In defining the responsibility of the managers, in setting the standards of their performance, they must consider and posses the skill of good communication. We must never forget that the most powerful communication is not what you say, but it is what you do. What counts, in final analysis, is not what people are told but what they accept. It is concept of the role of communication in any field, that it characterizes an effective leadership.

In a series of articles, we will review these nuances and levers. This first article sets forth the basic success criteria that generally apply to most situations. Fundamentally, there are only three success criteria:

• Did the project/program deliver what was expected?
• Did the project/program achieve the deadline that was agreed upon?
• Did the project/program come in within budget?

If the answers to all three questions are affirmative, the project/program is successful. If two of the three criteria were met, the project/program may be deemed as partially successful. If one or none of the three criteria were met, largely the project/program has failed.

It is important to make a sharp distinction between success of projects/programs succeeding as measured against the above mentioned three success criteria on the one hand, and the success of underlying business value creation, driven by a business strategy. One clearly could have a fundamentally poor business strategy. A successful project/program is hardly likely to correct for a flawed strategy. On the other hand, a sound business strategy execution and the creation of the resulting business value can be badly harmed by a failed project/program. For example, a product or a service may not reach the market at all or not reach it as envisioned by the business strategy. If both the strategy and the underlying project/program are both flawed, of course the entire effort will fail. The best outcome of course is a sound strategy coupled with a successful project/program that enables such strategy. Figure 1 below illustrates the possible outcomes:

Figure 1

In the next article, we will review the basic requirements of setting the proper stage for a project or a program to be successful before it begins or is commissioned.