From many available and traditional communication channels in the enterprise environment, COVID has taught us that even the face-to-face channel is no longer freely and universally available, we are still able to develop at a higher level the digital communication channels with our peers and customers and provide optimal response while we keep a good work environment.
We have gone from our common and traditional crowded meeting room where discussions among many people were intense, and sometimes unnecessarily long to more efficient and timely digital communications like video conferences with the capabilities of almost full interactions.
With technology advancement, digital communication channels have broadened, still, some organizations were lean to have their employees gathered in property to effectively develop the business strategy through face-to-face communications. COVID has just given a little push to some of us who felt reluctant to believe that we could still be efficient having our communications digitally. Video meetings, audio meetings get more popular and CSPs (Communication Service Providers) work hard to offer more tools in the digital world for globalization, we open the meeting door to our partners in different time zones, places, but just with a simple connection to the internet we get to be as efficient as before, we bring our ideas to our screens and can put together the execution plan, the to-do list. In some cases, the mandatory digital communication allows us to be eager to participate and provide honest feedback on certain topics.
So what is your preference?
As I mentioned sometimes our face-to-face meeting could be quite long, why? Our customers were busy and made us wait longer, traffic delayed the meeting, interruptions along the way, and much more. Finally, we were able to brainstorm and go through the points of the agenda, get consensus, and outline action items to execute a plan. With this setting of course our 5 senses were at display, feelings, and emotions out there.
Do you consider this setting was the most effective one?
Of course, as human beings we need to have use of our senses, see the people, facial expressions, body language, acknowledge our environment, listen to voices, sounds, move around the area, taste the water, the coffee, have extra time to discuss a side topic, absorbing a few distractions too. And again, all this is part of our human traditional communication experience.
Interesting though it is the fact on how easy business people can accommodate in order to not only maintain the growth of the business but also the motivation of their employees and customers to move forward with the established business plan, and yes, many obstacles have come to the road but resilience has allowed us to keep going and embrace the available channels to communicate. We learn faster, not only the tool itself but the etiquette for successful digital communication.
According to the article from Forbes Insights, “Silver Linings: Key Lessons From How We Communicate In the New Normal” from November 20, 2020:
“More than half of the survey respondents (56%) told us that video meetings have been effective for coming up with innovative ideas on how to improve the business (68% of senior executives). That is significant, considering 61% of senior executives state that the pandemic has led to accelerated innovation at their organizations”
So nowadays communication is here to stay longer, we learned it, we use it and we make it effective, no matter which crisis we face we promptly get ready to keep going.
And remember Collaboration is the key to your success, so share your comments here.