Efficient communication: the fundament for successful collaboration

In everyday business life, this should rarely happen. Statistically proven are 75 business mails per employee a day (Statista 2019). We know of one case from a customer in the field of large-scale projects where the project manager received up to 600 e-mails daily!

The technical possibilities of e-mail have fostered a communication culture in companies that cost time and tremendous resources - and have a very disruptive effect on collaboration efficiency. Forbes magazine put the cost of this kind of e-mail culture at about $400 billion in 2014 in the US alone. The problem is unlikely to have diminished since then, even with the advent of messenger services like WhatsApp, Threema and others, resulting in the continuous waste of time and money. 

Most e-mails in day-to-day business have to do with mutual coordination and collaboration. That’s why the information tsunami harms the ability to collaborate truly. And on productivity. To keep things running smoothly, spontaneous, and uncoordinated meetings are held, which in turn cost time. Time that is needed elsewhere.  

In a nutshell, companies are communicating poorly and are failing to organize their typical day-to-day business sensibly and proactively. With fatal consequences. Because in addition to a directly measurable waste of time, valuable information flows pile up, and collaboration is made increasingly difficult. At a time when fast information processing is technically possible and has often become critical for companies’ success, such self-made barriers have a negative impact on performance. And thus, on competitiveness.  

It’s all about the effective and efficient transfer of information, coordination, and collaboration. In other words, leadership. The key bottlenecks are in communication and the work process. The focus is on defining and managing work in a company and tasks that create value. 

It’s clear that solutions must be adopted everywhere, especially in the areas where information flows.

How to optimize information flows

There is currently an extensive discussion about data being the “oil of the future”. While this may be true, but it is only part of the overall truth. After all, information is needed to analyze data and transform it into complex services or products. This is the context in which value creation stands today.

 

 

 

From this perspective, information gains critical value. Value that needs to be strengthened and managed. We know the value stream design method from lean management, which provides a powerful lever to increase value and eliminate waste. We have transferred this approach to the world of information flow and can thus optimize information, communication, and collaboration as key value drivers. 

You must always be able to measure the performance of a company’s processes and to make improvements if necessary. This means coordinating tasks, optimizing leadership and enabling true collaboration in all projects and operations.

 

If you get this right, it will not only help you avoid the daily e-mail traffic jam in your inbox. It will also contribute to increasing the value of your company.

 

Yours,

Andreas Romberg

from the ValueStreamer team

 

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