Business Intelligence Success Factors: Tools for Aligning Your Business in the Global Economy

CHAPTER 3

Effective Communication

If the seat of the soul is not inside a person, or outside a person, but the very place where they overlap and meet with their world, then the voice is as good a candidate as any for getting the measure of our soul life.

 

—DAVID WHYTE, THE HEART AROUSED REFERRING TO GERALD DE NERVAL’S CONCEPTS

 

In a global economy of increasing complexity and interdependency, effective communication is an essential core competency. Companies that are striving for or have achieved world-class Business Intelligence are dealing with great complexity while managing a highly specialized and multicultural workforce. This chapter focuses on the many aspects and components of interpersonal communication as they relate to success for organizations in the global economy.

BENEFITS OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

Innovation occurs for many reasons, including greed, ambition, conviction, happenstance, acts of nature, mistakes, and desperation. But one force above all seems to facilitate the process. The easier it is to communicate, the faster change happens.

 

—JAMES BURKE, CONNECTIONS

Many leaders have the notion that communication is a “soft” issue, having very little effect on profit. The enormity of communicating in today’s interconnected economy can be overwhelming, given the number of different languages, technologies, industries, and markets across the globe.

Consider the experience of a measurement instrument company that hired a consulting company to improve its process ...