Merland: October 2007

Yes, I am back in school and it's a good thing. Just to bore all of you to tears here is my latest attempt at thinking... I will keep you posted on the grade I receive this week...

When an organization formally disseminates a message to its constituents the meaning of the message is often not fully comprehended until it makes its way through a complex process of informal communications. These informal networks enable employees to decipher the real meaning underlying many formal modes of communications, and can also allow for a greater range of creativity and ingenuity to enter into the communications process. The way in which these informal communications networks operate is fluid and complex but I find that there are a few essential elements that are almost always present: differentiation, fragmentation and integration. Each of these three elements plays a crucial role in making corporations’ informal methods of communications as valuable to a company as its formal methods.

At a recent quarterly global communications meeting I attended, the Vice President of the division and his business directors stood behind a podium and diligently slogged through an hour of PowerPoint propaganda. The audience sat quietly, obediently held all questions until the end of the presentation and then… asked no questions. Without exception, after every one of these meetings the audience funnels out into the hall and breaks off into small, impromptu discussion groups. The topic of choice is the meeting, of course, but rarely is the discussion simply a reiteration of the bullet points, facts and figures just presented. Rather, the goal of these groups is often to descramble the subtext of the presentation.

Following is an example of how a formal message might be informally interpreted:

Formal Message from Presentation: Despite increased profits, we must keep spending in check to ensure continued growth in the future.

Unofficial Message from Post-Presentation Discussion: Profits were artificially inflated by pulling sales forward a quarter, so next quarter’s sales numbers look bleak. To prop up the bottom line rumor has it that that the company will no longer pay for our morning doughnuts and coffee.

The communications example above illustrates differentiation in action. The official message communicated to the group did not correlate with the message received within informal peer groups. While our textbook views differentiation as detrimental to effective dialogue I view it as an essential element. Differentiation enables people to pull in information and messages from a large array of sources. It has a predisposition to question authority and to look deeper into official messages. Differentiation is often required to decode dogmatic corporate babble.

As an illustration, let’s suppose that management has sent out a memo detailing a plan to streamline the company’s supply chains by locating manufacturing operations closer to customers in emerging markets. Using a differentiation perspective, an employee may interpret this information to mean that her job is at risk of being cut and sent to lower cost labor markets closer to China. On the surface, it is not immediately apparent how an employee understanding that her job may soon be cut provides a benefit to the corporation.

Differentiation, however, can be critical for injecting new and creative ways of understanding and thinking into a corporation. Perhaps this employee happens to be an expert at local tax laws and now, being properly motivated, discover a few loopholes which could ultimately save the company millions. In this way the employee’s differentiated meaning could contribute to eliminating the necessity for “streamlining” the supply chain.

Differentiation is just one element in the triumvirate of effective informal organization communications. Differentiation works in conjunction with fragmentation. I like to think of fragmentation as the magnet of informal communications. Contained within this powerful communications perspective is both the power to attract and repel. The ambiguities and uncertainties we encounter as we attempt to process information open up possibilities for other ideas and perspectives to be considered, which ultimately either brings us closer to the intended meaning of the original communication, or sends us off in a different direction.

Take the example I originally gave regarding the quarterly communications meeting. After the meeting, suppose I go back to my desk and discuss the presentation with a group of coworkers who did not attend the meeting. The magnetic effect of fragmentation could play out in two very separate ways. After discussing the meeting some may agree that the true message was really a ruse to cut the doughnut fund. With that in mind we may decide to continue with our plans to run an advertisement despite the current spending restriction. Conversely, some in our ranks may actually believe the real message conveyed was the official one and conclude that we shouldn’t spend the money on placing an ad, to help ensure continued lower costs and higher profits for the upcoming quarter.

The built-in tensions that arise out of fragmentation mirror the tensions that also exist as a result of differentiation. This conflict between formal and informal communications is crucial for keeping employees engaged. Though it is true that engagement is not always positive, from my perspective any active engagement – whether positive or negative – in the communications process is better than no engagement at all. If an employee is upset or confused by the cacophony of messages that surround her I argue that this is an employee who is likely to be more productive and creative in her role within the company. Fragmentation is a chaotic landscape filled with conflicting symbols and messages that are prone to over-interpretation and misinterpretation, but this mosaic also the holds the potential for creative interpretation and new perspectives.

So how does integration function as the final component in the informal communication process? Cognitive dissonance and the resulting desire to reconcile conflicting information drive us to settle upon an acceptable meaning. Discord from differentiation and fragmentation perspectives is likely to produce many conflicting messages. This conflict is not a comfortable position to be in for any length of time so it is only natural that we will seek a way to quell this disquiet. We are prone to make meaning when one isn’t clearly, fully or convincingly provided to us - to rationalize the message and to move on.

This final step in the informal communications process is the most crucial. It is within this integration phase that we fully come to accept the meaning ultimately landed upon. This step in my experience rarely happens in the manner our text describes. For me integration is acceptance after careful reflection. Although the original intent of the formal meeting may have been to integrate meaning from the message delivered, it is not until we have wrestled with the message through differentiation and fragmentation frameworks that we are truly able to integrate its meaning.

To bring the original example full circle, through the process of integration I might ultimately come to understand that although upper management may have its sights set on eliminating the doughnut fund, they are behaving in a way that has the company’s and, by proxy, my best interests at heart. Therefore, I will try to limit my spending. I do this not just because I was told to through formal communication, but because I chose to accept the official message through my own informal process of meaning making.

I believe that the book falls short in relating the differentiation, fragmentation and integration organizational communications perspectives. I realize that these perspectives are primarily intended to serve as models or filters through which certain aspects of organizational communications are highlighted for further scrutiny. However, I think a more accurate reflection of organizational communications can be achieved when we view these models as parts of a complex system rather than as discrete elements. Differentiation, fragmentation and integration do work well as individual filters through which we can study communications. When we think of these three elements as composite parts of a complex system, however, we come to a richer understanding of how organizations communicate and how we interpret those communications.

Thursday's tend to be long for me. I have class after work so I don't get home until 9:15pm. This means I am generally not at home for a total of 15 hours... No Sonja time, no Jenn time, just work then class.

Class is great and all but it's nothing compared to my family.

Plus today I have this splitting headache that I has come out of nowhere within the last hour. I am praying that we watch a video for the first half of class...

I have lots of bits of stories I would like to write or pieces of a train of thought I would like to explore further and I tell myself that I should write it down. Inevitably I do not and then the thought fades and I move on.

One such thought is that there are two types of Ah-ha moments one can experience... one is a moment of great insight or discovery and the other is more of an mmm-hmmm moment... this is a moment of compassion or understanding of others with no great insight or discovery of something new to you...

perhaps it's best I let sleeping thoughts lay.

Merland

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A Repeat

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Various Sonja in September