GOOD COMMUNICATIOINS CAN MAKE YOU RICH

Managers tend to think of good communications, whether writing or speaking, as simply grammatically and syntactically correct. Others delve more deeply and add conveying the right meanings logically, clearly, and concisely. Regardless of the definition, when communications are 'good,' profits jump; when they aren't, profits plummet.

The reasons profits jump lie in a broader definition of 'good' that includes their results. Good communications:

• Are quickly understood by receivers, thereby eliminating the telephone, email, and other tag games and meetings with which we are so familiar.
• Assure that receivers act in ways that were intended by senders, avoiding wasteful excursions to the wrong tasks.
• Reinforce positive relationships with friends and customers by being sensitive to their needs and feelings, eliminating the extraordinary and very expensive efforts to either bring a friend or customer back into the fold or develop others to fill in the gap.
• Are trusted by higher authorities, eliminating editing or, worse, rewriting.

Communications that lead to these results obviously save time and raise productivity and profitability.

How much? is a fair question, and three surveys/studies help with an answer:

The Enterprise Social Network (ESN) concluded that a firm with 100 employees wastes 17 hours a week clarifying bad communications, which they translate to $525,000 a year or $5250 per employee per year.

Gallup notes that bad internal communications cost $26,041 per employee per year, more than five times as much as reported by ESN. So a firm with 100 employees is losing $2.6 million or more per year.

My survey concluded that bad communications cost between one and ten percent of revenue, or an average of 6 percent. Assuming that the revenue of a firm with 100 employees is about $18 million, the cost per employee per year would be $4800, and the cost to the firm would be $480,000.

Assume that all these costs can be converted to profits by converting all bad communications to good:

Added profits/employee/year      Added profits /firm of 100 employees/year

ESN                $5250                                                         $525,000

Gallop           $26,401                                                       $2,640,100

Geissler         $4800                                                         $480,000

Average        $12,150                                                     $1,215, 000

Average: $12,150 per employee per year, $1,215,000 per firm of 100 employees per year.

Yes, converting all bad communications to good is naively hopeful, but 80 percent is surely possible. How? There are only two ways: 1) Hire people who can write, which borders on impossible since the colleges don't teach writing in their professional schools, although some of them say they do; and 2) teach your people to write, which you shouldn't need to do if the colleges did their jobs.

The bottom line: Companies that want to tap into communications as a profit center instead of a loss leader must become educators.