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Communication

Article Summary: Communication

One of the rather siginificant issues in efficiency is business communication. In particular I am interested in 360-Degree feedback, speak-out programs and improvement contests.

360-degree feedback refers to the process of collecting information and evaluation from all relevant parties concerning a particular individuals' performance, which may include superiors, coworkers, and team members. Personally, I have a serious problem with this kind of feedback. In my experience and opinion, it is a great mistake to ask equals or coworkers for feedback: such feedback is naturally biased. In either case, the feedback can hardly be neutral due to factors such as consequences or rivalry. I believe that feedback should be obtained by neutral superiors which are only interested in objective evaluation that may lead to improvement. Otherwise, it may create a hostile work environment.

Speak out program is referred to the process of collection and evaluation of employee input in decision making. This particular process will enable the employees to contribute to the firms' decision making by taking advantage of the knowledge of front line workers. I certainly have a positive experience with this sort of input: mid and upper management are usually far away from day to day process and flaws of daily tasks. The most reliable input is from those that actually have to deal with customers and clients. Thus, their input is more accurate and can be invaluable to streamlining and higher profits. Naturally the information and input has to be evaluated for neutrality: this can be easily achieved by cross referencing several employees' information.

Improvement contest refers to competitive evaluation of implemented improvement actions, whereby internal assessment mechanisms decide on the validity and value of each contestant group. Personally I have not yet witnessed a successful implementation of such process. I believe that such contest would be contradictory to clan culture of team work and success: since by definition, improvement contests are the evaluation of team efforts, it is contradictory to recognition of individual efforts. I realize that team work and team efforts are invaluable to success of most companies, however, since the basic building block of a team, is its individual members, I would suggest that personal and individual efforts should be recognized first. Thus, I believe that a successful improvement contest has to recognize the individual efforts as well as group efforts.

Ultimately, all three of these concepts are tools of communication which are meant to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of corporate productivity. It is vital to analyze all of them in context of individual setting and individual corporate culture. Any selected process or combination of procedures has to be chosen and optimized based on predictive advantages within particular industry, and clan culture.

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Kamyar Shah
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