ABC NET

Misinformation: IT takes charge of one of the most valuable business assets - information. Information does not live alone but permeates into everywhere in the businesses. Thus, the value of information is not isolated. Misinformation can cause business fail at any moment. If information is unavailable, inaccurate, lost, stolen, or compromised, it will hinder the achievement of business goals, disappoint customers, and even misled the business in the wrong direction. Information is critical, not every piece of information is created equal though. In a business scope, there are some of the important bits and bytes of information needed when evaluating a new market or any emerging business growth opportunity. Information Management is the structural process of aligning the usage of information through the multidisciplinary management discipline. Thus, to strengthen information management link, IT should first work to identify how information is associated with the tangible value of businesses; products and resources. It’s also critical to ensure information quality, accessibility, reliability, and refine information to fully support the business goals and objectives collaboratively.

Miscommunication: The gap between IT and business is reality, and often miscommunication is the root cause. Communication is complicated because there are differences in goals and contexts. There are different business dialects, communication styles, and these contexts can shift frequently. The business system is complex and the organization is multifaceted. Without the contextual understanding of people, process, technology, or system, the blind spots are inevitable and cause miscommunication across functional or geographical borders. Miscommunication enlarges business gaps and decelerates the organizational speed. Communication is the key to improve leadership effectiveness and reinvent IT reputation as a trustworthy business partner. CIOs can lift their role as the strategic business leader and skillful communicator via their unique perspective and insightful abstract. They can communicate effectively with all levels of the organization by interpreting both business and IT issues back and forth accurately without “lost in translation.” The great communicators can communicate objectively with strong logic, clarity, and understanding. Communication is not just the soft discipline, it’s both an art and science.

Misinterpretation: A well-established organization has different dialects, every organizational functions or division has its own focus and dialect. Misinterpretation is perhaps caused by pre-conceptual judgment, random assumptions, or simply lack of deeper understanding. Without using common business language or enforcing mutual understanding, misinterpretation will further cause dysfunctional business management. In fact, the “lost in translation” is the common pitfalls of strategy management. In the digital working environment, context intelligence is about understanding the whole meaning of functional dialects and business cultures or subcultures via connection, discernment, penetration, and perception, etc. Business leaders today need to know how to read between the lines and understand the inter-connectivity between parts and the whole without getting lost in interpretation. They can overcome those communication obstacles, master different business dialects and convey the right message in the right format to tailor different audiences for strengthening business relationship links and improving leadership effectiveness.

Mistrust: Mistrust is often caused by miscommunication, lack of transparency, or micromanagement. Mistrust further causes damages of business relationship and enlarges gaps of involving parties. The deeper the trust, the more valuable the relationship would be. Without a trustful business relationship, every decision becomes an argument and change get stuck. IT leaders have to be able to demonstrate in very tangible ways that IT understands business and builds trustful business-IT relationship via in-depth observation, communication, and empathetic understanding, etc. Transparency is critical to develop a trusting relationship between the business and IT. To keep IT and business on the same page, IT leaders have to reach out horizontally to their business peers. IT, marketing, finance, HR, etc. IT leaders can manage multi-layer relationships such as business peer/shareholder relationship, customer relationship, vendor relationship., etc. Trust = Communication +Transparency + Delegation + Reciprocity + Verification.

Misjudgment: Nothing is certain with the rapid digital flow, business executives, including CIOs have to make assumptions or “forecast” all the time. You have to make them, but you will never have complete information, Forecast precision will help the company prepare the journey for either capturing the rising business opportunities timely or preventing potential risks effortlessly. From decision management perspective, many leaders make poor judgment, due to the lack of comprehensive knowledge, lack of critical thinking, independent thinking, and Systems Thinking abilities, cognitive bias, or preconceived notions. Ego leads to misjudgment as well. Do not fall into linear thought traps, you need to listen, accept, and act on the blind spot. When you intend to understand, interpret and judge something, you need to form a critical opinion of it based on facts, discerned data, common understanding, and clarified notions to ensure the pieces of the puzzle can be integrated into a clear picture.

To identify and strengthen these missing links, business management, especially at the senior management level, needs to gain the contextual understanding of the inter-connectivity of both visible and invisible business success factors, apply interdisciplinary approaches to planning, managing, collaborating, enforce inter-organizational linkage, and take step-wise actions to improve digital management maturity.

Break down communication bottlenecks by paying attention to content, context, and style: Technically, communication can be broadly categorized into technology-based communication and communication based on direct human contact. There are interpersonal communication and intrapersonal communication. Communication effectiveness can be improved upon when the hard barriers are broken down and soft obstacles are overcome. There are hard communication barriers such as out of date processes, procedures, practices or soft ones like culture, politics or leadership style, etc. Miscommunication is also caused by perception gaps because people have a different knowledge base and cognitive understanding to articulate things. We live in the digital era with exponential growth of information. The updated and accurate information can make conversations more trustful and persuasive. Also, pay more attention to communication content (what's your message), communication context (what will indicate to a different audience) and communication styles. Don’t forget the wise quote from the Drucker: “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.” -Peter Drucker

Improve communication effectiveness by overcoming "Lost in Translation" syndrome: Communication is complicated because there are differences in goals and contexts, especially strategic communication at the board level. Contextual understanding is about knowing the business dynamic and perceiving the business insight in a cohesive way in order to enforce cross-functional communication. Misinterpretation enlarges communication gaps and causes decision-ineffectiveness. Misinterpretation is often caused by a lack of contextual understanding, pre-conceptual judgment, random assumptions, prejudices, misinformation, or simply lack of deeper understanding. Assumptions and prejudices are due to a lack of deeper understanding. When you intend to understand, interpret and judge something, you need to form a critical opinion of it based on facts, discerned data, common understanding, and clarified notions,


Leverage diverse viewpoints by listening, brainstorming, or questioning to improve communication effectiveness: Highly effective leaders and strategists are business “multi-linguists” who can overcome all sorts of communication obstacles, master different business dialects and convey the right message in the right format to tailor different audiences for harnessing communication effectiveness and enforcing business collaboration. Lack of trust is an often overlooked barrier to communication. It is important to foster an environment in which feedback and communication are based on reality and not simply what senior management wants to hear. Authentic and candid communication helps to harness trust and encourage collaborative problem-solving.

Communication clarity directly impacts on the business effectiveness and organizational maturity. Communications are the tools to solve problems, and languages are the tools to make communications. The great communicators can communicate objectively with strong logic, clarity, and understanding. The reality of messages is that they have to be "real." There is no magic communication formula, but always pay more attention to content, context, and style for interpreting things with clarity, communicating shared goals clearly and making smooth business progress.