First of all, I must say that I am not an expert on communication theory and I know that it is a very deep field of study that may take one’s years to accumulate enough knowledge. On the other hand, I intend to share my observations on how our corporate communication styles have been changing since “COVID-19 triggered the digitalization” of the enterprises, schools, governments etc.
To me, we are just carrying our communication rituals to digital environments. This is the spirit of nowadays. Technology is given and available, infrastructure is ready for years but mindsets are anchored to the 1980s. Therefore, we are only simulating something very old and hardwired in our daily lives in teleconferencing media.
To make things more concrete, it is enough to have a look at the basic observables of meetings around. Those were the days that we were meeting in a room with 7 people, now we are still meeting with 7 people in the digital rooms. The nature of the information exchange and hierarchy based communication forms are the same, as well. In the so called non-digital times, meetings were usually planned as one hour sessions, today we still follow that rule. Office assistants are still exist and interestingly still planning the managers’ meeting schedules. And they usually plan the famous one hour sessions by putting one after another without adding any moments to take a fresh breath between sessions. It is a perfect way to die digitally. I call it digitally archaic.
So what has changed?
Frankly speaking, I exaggerated a bit because we are not meeting with 7 people any more. We meet 77 people in the one hour “digital” sessions. Almost always, the breakdown of 77 is like 7 aces and 70 more listeners. When that proliferation of meeting attendees occurs, the communications in the meetings become a monologue or minimized dialog. In a usual picture, the moderator who is the organizer of the session transfers information to the most senior manager in the session. Manager listens, gives necessary directives to the moderator or to the 7 aces in the session. Others listen in a “muted” fashion. When you compare the number of the distinct communications and the variety of the communication directions between attendees of the meetings that were planned traditionally with 7 people in the old days and the 77 attendees meetings of nowadays, I'm sure you’d see no significant difference. But, what is the role of additional 70 people? Some says, it is very good not to be limited by the physical conditions of meeting rooms so that any one can join my session and get my messages directly and it reduces the risk of information loss during message dissemination. It seems correct. However, it is not that easy. To test it, call 10 of your colleagues and explain them a complicated situation directly in the same room. Then, check their notes taken. You will see the differences between the notes. It is expected because every person puts her interpretation into the notes taken, their vocabularies are different, level of personal know-hows are different etc. Without asked questions, given answers and active dialogues it is not possible to assure high quality information exchange during the meetings. I can say that additional muted 70 only fosters the one way communication that kills effective knowledge transfer. The bottom line is digital meetings are becoming large conferences where the wiser person speaks and the others passively listen. In other words, monologue which is not that revolutionary.
In contrary, I am expecting real model changes in every aspect of corporate communications. As I said at the beginning, I am far from building a future communication model for the enterprises but I can ask a few questions:
Why don’t only 2 persons meet every time they need information exchange?
Why cannot those sessions last less or more than magical one hour?
Why corporate communication picture cannot be the set of those necessary 2 people meetings?
Why don’t we stop calling those sessions as “meetings” and give them a new name?
“I have a dialogue with Jane at 9 am.”
“Let’s arrange a dialogue after lunch.”
Why don’t we stop PowerPointing?
Why can’t we build our own schedule?
Why can’t we run multiple micro sessions at the same time?
Why don’t we stop taking screenshots of crowded Zoom meetings to share them in LinkedIn?
Why cannot we re-define?
I know we can, just a little more time.