We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are three areas of need always present in all working groups and organizations:

The main content of communication – information, ideas and knowledge, for example – in your organization should tie in with these three overlapping areas.

So what are you communicating?

• Purpose, aim and objectives – The core purpose, the key aims and the more tangible objectives of the organization are central in communication. Purpose answers the question ‘Why?’
• Plans and policies – Planning answers the questions ‘What’, ‘When?’, ‘How?’, ‘Where?’ and ‘Who?’. Planning may be at strategic, operational or team levels.
• Progress and prospects – Progress motivates; prospects motivate even more. This could include new products, innovations and positive changes in the pipelines.
• Changes in structure and deployment – Any organizational changes or alterations in the organization’s deployment.
• Ways to improve teamwork – Anything that results in better team working, so that the various parts work in an integrated, harmonious whole.
• Ethos and values – The particular stars the organization steers by in the form of its corporate values; its spirit as opposed to its form.
• Pay and conditions – Anything that affects the remuneration, conditions of work or personal prospects for employment of individuals.
• Safety, health and welfare – Information that affects safety or security.
• Education and training – Whatever may contribute to the personal development, present competence and future capability of each individual member.

If you wish to be listened to, communicate to your hearers what is important, relevant or interesting. That principle applies as much to communicating in organizations as it does in personal life.

An individual without information cannot take responsibility. An individual with information cannot help but take responsibility.

Jan Carlson, former Chief Executive of Scandinavian Airlines