INSTANT MBA: Communication Gets Lost Throughout The Chain Of Command

Today's advice comes from Kris Duggan, CEO of Badgeville, via The New York Times:

"I think organizations have a hard time communicating up and down the chain of command and getting everybody mobilized to focus on the same goals. I’ve experienced that firsthand — whatever your task or scope of work, you don’t know how that connects to your manager and your manager’s manager, and how that is all kind of interconnected."

Duggan says that in a large corporation with multiple departments it's easy to get your company's message lost in the shuffle. Being clear and concise about your company's mission requires you to communicate that vision across sectors. According to Duggan, the best way to go about that is to be transparent. If you publish your company's goals every month and circulate them throughout the office, your employees will not only feel that you are being open and honest with them, but they won't lose sight of where they're headed.

"So the biggest thing we focus on is this concept of “interlock.” It’s about how we get all the departments connected with their goals — from the C.E.O. to the front-line person — so that all of those goals and controls are transparent...To achieve that, we publish company wide goals and controls. We have six major goals this year, and there might be three or four metrics for each. We publish that every month for the company. It’s transparent. Then we talk every month with the company about whether we’re at green, yellow or red on any of those six things, and we are very transparent about that. We don’t hide the bad news."

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