It is true that this way of organizing between departments causes inefficiencies and errors, but in my opinion the most serious problems come from the lack of coordination between management, middle management and departments . In other words, they are generated more vertically than horizontally.
The transmission of information has to flow in all directions (horizontal and vertical), but it is especially important that management knows how to transmit information and involve the rest of the organization, and that the organization knows how to communicate what is happening to management, so that it can make the appropriate decisions.
In this context, one of the sources of problems and misunderstandings arises in the transmission of information, specifically in the 'translation' of marketing language and metrics into what middle management, but above all management, understands and needs to hear .
That is to say, one of the most common problems is that departments report using their language and metrics, and also focus the analysis on their activity (they think little indonesia number about the context and the effect of their activity on other areas). In other words, they do not stop to think about the recipient of that information and how they can use what they are being told to make decisions.
Therefore, when they receive the report or listen to the presentation, they do not fully understand and, above all, they do not find it relevant .
We are focusing on the transmission of information from the bottom up, but the same thing happens from the top down. What happens if we receive a corporate email that uses complicated language and talks about things that are very far from us?
Keys to correct information transmission in a company
Summarizing what we have seen in the introduction of the article, we can say that the keys to effective information transmission are:
Adapting the language to the recipient : this is an essential part of communication. For two parties to understand each other, they must use a language that they both master.
If we are not able to adapt our way of communicating to the person in front of us, misunderstandings, lack of attention, etc. will cause the conversation to be a disaster.
Provide a global vision : when reporting the activity of a department/channel to middle management or management, we must provide context to our information so that its relevance and effects on the rest of the areas can be understood.
Report metrics that are relevant to the decision-maker : due to their low relevance and lack of relationship to the business, the metrics that are usually included in reports provide little value to the recipient. Therefore, when reporting, we must think about the metrics that the recipient of the information considers most important (of the metrics you manage, which ones directly affect their work? Which metrics does the person you want to report to report to?).
It seems clear that it is errors in communication that cause many of the problems in the organization , and that lead us to make wrong decisions .
How to make reports relevant to management?
Or to put it another way, how do we get the changes we want to happen? How do we get the decisions we suggest in our reports to be taken?
When I've talked about decision-making in marketing , about dashboards or control panels , or how to use a dashboard to get the most out of it, I've talked about issues related to this problem, but I haven't gone into detail about how to make things happen, how to make decisions.
We may fail in language and not be fully understood, we may lack sufficient context for them to understand their relevance within the overall picture, but if we manage to relate marketing metrics to the business metrics that affect the person to whom we transmit the information, success is practically assured.