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Moving Information Effectively: Organizational Communication Strategies
Principles of Management · Chapter 12: Communication and Financial ControlSection 12.4 · lesson 76 of 11712 min · free with a free account
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In this lesson
Organizational communication strategies: which way information flows, and how it bends.
- Describe the 4 directions of flow and their distortions
- Explain why senior managers are the worst informed
- Distinguish formal networks from the grapevine
- Design a communication approach for a situation
Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,598 words). Read along, or search it.
Communication and Financial Control
Moving Information Effectively
Information moves through an organization in more than one direction, and each direction has its own way of going wrong. This section looks at communication across the whole organization. We'll follow messages downward, and watch what gets lost on the way. We'll follow them upward, and see why senior managers end up the worst-informed people in the building. We'll look at lateral and diagonal flow, and the tension with the chain of command. We'll separate formal from informal networks, and take the grapevine seriously. Then we'll cover communication during change and crisis, and five decisions for designing a communication approach. And we'll finish at Harborline, where the executive team learned about a problem months late.
Downward Communication
From the Top, Losing Detail
Downward communication flows from higher levels of an organization to lower ones. It carries direction, instruction, policy, and feedback. Its characteristic problems are specific, and they recur. The first is message loss at each level. Content gets retold, summarized, or reinterpreted on its way down. The second is insufficient repetition. A message sent once from the top is easily assumed to be understood everywhere below. But Subchapter twelve point one established that real understanding takes reinforcement. The third is assuming that sending equals receiving. A message leaving a senior office gets treated as if it had genuinely arrived, and been understood, at the frontline. Subchapter six point six covers that distinction directly.
Figure 12.4.1
One Message, 4 Levels Down
Figure twelve point four point one traces a single message down four levels, at a fictional company, Harborline Manufacturing. The executive says: we are restructuring to improve regional efficiency. The director passes on: restructuring is happening, for efficiency reasons. The manager's version: some changes are coming, not sure exactly what. And at the frontline: something about changes. Maybe layoffs? Watch what happens to specificity at every step. There's no single dramatic distortion anywhere in the chain. Just the ordinary, cumulative retelling that downward communication passes through. By the last level, the message bears only a loose resemblance to what the executive actually said. And notice what filled the space. Where the specifics fell away, a worst-case guess appeared.
Upward Communication
Why the Top Knows Least
Upward communication flows from lower levels to higher ones. It carries performance information, problems, suggestions, and concerns. Its characteristic problem is filtering, introduced in Subchapter twelve point two. People systematically edit what they send to those who have power over them. They soften bad news. They omit inconvenient detail. And they frame information in whatever light seems safest, given the recipient's power over their own position. The consequence deserves to be stated directly. Senior managers are systematically the worst-informed people in an organization about actual operational reality. That's not because they're careless. It's because every level of filtering, between the frontline and the top, has quietly removed some of the unflattering truth.
Keeping It Open
4 Practices for Honest Upward Flow
Four specific practices keep upward communication open, rather than filtered into uselessness. The first is how a manager responds to the first piece of bad news she receives. That sets a lasting precedent. React with blame, and everyone watching learns to filter more heavily next time. Respond constructively, and they learn the opposite. The second is no consequence for the messenger. Someone who raises a genuine problem isn't penalized for raising it. That holds however uncomfortable the content itself is. The third is skip-level contact. A senior manager deliberately hears directly from people several levels below her. Not only through her own direct reports. That bypasses some of the filtering a full hierarchical relay would apply. The fourth is structured mechanisms, like a formal channel designed specifically for raising concerns. That provides a route that doesn't depend entirely on someone's willingness to speak up informally.
Lateral and Diagonal
Across the Organization
Lateral communication flows across units at a similar level. Peers coordinate their work directly, rather than routing it up to a shared superior and back down again. The efficiency advantage is direct. Two peers resolve a shared issue much faster than a full vertical relay would. That creates a genuine tension with the chain of command, the formal vertical reporting line. Subchapter three point five covered it, as the scalar chain principle. Fayol himself recognized the problem. His gangplank exception permits direct lateral contact between peers, when speed genuinely requires it. It's an admission that following the vertical chain for every coordination need would be needlessly slow. Diagonal communication crosses both level and function at once. Picture a frontline specialist consulting directly with a manager in a different department. It's appropriate where the person with the relevant knowledge or authority sits outside both the sender's level, and her own chain.
Table 12.4.1
4 Directions Compared
Table twelve point four point one brings the four directions together. For each, it gives the purpose, the characteristic distortion, and the mechanism that reduces it. Downward communication suffers message loss and reinterpretation at each level. The remedy is deliberate repetition, and confirming understanding at every level. Upward communication suffers filtering, as unfavorable information is softened before it reaches power. The remedy is a constructive response to bad news, no consequence for the messenger, and skip-level contact. Lateral communication runs into tension with the formal chain of command. An explicit gangplank exception, permitting direct peer contact, reduces that tension. And diagonal communication creates ambiguity about whose approval, if anyone's, is required. The remedy is clear norms for when diagonal contact is appropriate, and expected. So each direction has its own distortion, and each distortion has a matching remedy.
Networks
Formal Design, Informal Reality
Every organization has two kinds of communication network. The formal network is the set of paths it deliberately designs. Official reporting lines, scheduled meetings, defined approval chains. The informal network is the set of paths that emerges anyway, regardless of the formal design. It follows actual relationships, proximity, and trust, rather than the organization chart. It's the same idea as the informal organization from Subchapter four point one, which grows up alongside the formal one. Networks also differ in structure. Some are centralized around one or a few connecting points. Others distribute connections across many members. Structure affects three distinct outcomes. Centralization tends to increase speed for simple, well-structured problems, because information routes efficiently through a few central points. For the same reason, it tends to increase accuracy. But it tends to reduce satisfaction among members at the periphery. They get less direct access, and less voice.
The Grapevine
Faster and More Accurate Than You Think
The grapevine is an organization's informal information network. It carries gossip, rumor, and unofficial news. It has several documented characteristics worth stating precisely. It's fast. It typically outpaces formal channels considerably. Its accuracy is higher than managers generally assume. That runs against the common instinct to dismiss grapevine content as mere rumor. And it becomes most active under two specific conditions. Ambiguity, where formal channels haven't yet supplied a clear answer. And anxiety, where the stakes of not knowing feel high. The practical implication runs against a common managerial instinct. The way to manage the grapevine is to reduce ambiguity, by supplying clear formal information promptly. Not to suppress it. Suppression does nothing about the ambiguity and anxiety driving it. It usually just pushes the same activity further out of management's view.
Change and Crisis
When Communication Matters Most (6.3)
Periods of change or crisis, covered further in Subchapter six point three, place specific demands on communication. Frequency should increase. The ambiguity and anxiety the grapevine feeds on are both elevated during genuine change. Consistency across every communication becomes more important. In an already uncertain period, inconsistent messages compound the uncertainty, rather than resolving it. Acknowledging what isn't yet known is more effective than silence. Say plainly that a specific detail is still undetermined. Silence, remember, is read as bad news, whatever the actual reason. And the cost of waiting until the message is complete is real, and often underestimated. Holding back until every detail is final leaves the ambiguity gap open much longer. A series of honest, partial updates closes it sooner.
Designing an Approach
5 Deliberate Decisions
Designing communication for a specific situation takes five decisions, made deliberately rather than by default. First, audiences. Who specifically needs this information, and does that differ by group? Second, messages. What, specifically, does each audience need to know? Those may not be identical across audiences, even for the same underlying situation. Third, channels. Which medium fits each message? That follows the matching principle from Subchapter twelve point three. Fourth, cadence. How often should communication happen? That matters most during change or crisis. And fifth, the feedback mechanism. That's a genuine way to find out whether anything actually landed. Rather than assuming it did, simply because the message was sent.
Case Vignette
The Executive Team Learns Months Late
Here's a composite case, constructed for instruction. On a routine site visit, Harborline Manufacturing's executive team was surprised to learn of a recurring equipment problem on one production line. Frontline staff and their immediate supervisor had been quietly managing around it for several months. Tracing the information's path afterward revealed exactly the filtering pattern from this section. The supervisor had reported the issue upward. But she framed it as minor, and already under control. She was reluctant to be seen raising recurring problems too often. Her own manager received that softened version, and condensed it further, into a brief, reassuring line in a monthly summary. By the time any mention reached the executives, months later, it had been filtered at two separate levels. It no longer resembled the genuine, recurring problem the frontline had been living with. No one in the chain had lied. Each filtering decision felt reasonable in isolation. But the accumulated effect left senior leadership far less informed about their own operation, than the frontline employees closest to it. That's upward filtering, working exactly as predicted. Next, Subchapter twelve point five turns to conflict resolution, developing the approaches Subchapter eight point four handed forward.
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