Planning Communication

I have been occupied with a lot of activities in the past weeks. I am still looking forward to when I will adjust to the workload that comes with doing an MBA while on a full time job.

We were required to take a communication course from Harvard Business School. It was an interesting read with practical examples on how to plan communication, how to write and make presentations in business using defined models/templates. One of the topics that got my attention is at the Havard Business School was the process for planning communication.

First factor is the need to identify the purpose of the communication. We need to consider if the communication is intended to be informative or persuasive. Informative communication provides a description and seeks to fill an information gap. It is used to describe a process or explain an activity. Persuasive communication involves using language to make the audience think, feel and act in a way that the communicator wants. Persuasive communication can be employed when trying to convince leadership to make a change.

Another important factor is the need to know your audience. Find out who the audience is, what they know about the topic, their attitude towards the subject and towards you. Having a good knowledge of your audience helps you to decipher what is relevant to them and helps you to keep them engaged. You are also able to proactively identify possible barriers to communication and put measures to address them.

The last key consideration to be made is choosing the right way to make the communication. This involves choosing the right channel to make the communication. You need to evaluate if the message is best passed through a phone call, face-to-face discussion, email, written report etc. You will need to consider the three resources for creating a message namely;

• Reason
• Emotion and
•  Character

It is important to apply the right mix of these resources when planning a communication. For instance, Business audiences expect persuasion to be rational and not primarily emotional. Hence one has to skillfully use arguments and assumptions when making a persuasive communication. There are three types of arguments viz;

• Decision arguments which seeks to check what you considered to make a decision
• Evaluation argument which is used to assess the performance of an activity.
• Diagnosis argument which explains on the cause of an event  

Research has shown that people who learnt about using known models or templates for communication found it very useful and reliable. It is important that we apply a specified model in planning our communication and in business writing or when making presentation. A quick way to recall the planning communication process is to ask three questions.

1. Why?  – This involves identifying the purpose and what you want to achieve
2. Who: – Who is the audience
3. How – What is the best channel or resource should be used.

I also found the discussion on models relating Business writing and presentations very useful, and I will discuss the details in a subsequent post.

Practice is key to getting mastery of any activity and I hope to continue practicing all that I have learned from the Harvard Course.

#MEMBA12