Will People Resist
Improved Communication?

  Hi Doctor:

What kind of resistance can be expected to efforts to improve communication within the workplace? Further, what action can be taken to overcome the expected resistance?

Signed,

Up With Communication

Dear Up:

The primary function of organizational structure is to restrict and to channel communication. By so doing, organizations can control information load on members in the system. Restricting who enters a plant is the job of security. Restricting who gets the time of executives, what phone calls will be taken and mail will must be answered is the job of executive assistants. The job of gatekeepers in the workplace is to keep out the irrelevant and to minimize overload. They prevent burnout and chaos.

However, improving communication does not necessarily mean the exchange of more information. Yet rarely is there a communication audit that does not find a wide gap between what organizational members want and need to know and what they receive. The challenge of improving communication, therefore, is to address what communication is needed to maximize the quality of goods and services, and to do that means generating loyalty and organizational citizenship among employees and other major stakeholders.

To answer your question well requires some idea of what kind of communication improvement you envision. Will you improve communication by cutting overload, enriching those who are under-informed, by lessening the span of authority, by increasing the scope and distribution of the organization's advertising and public relations, by selection and training the workforce to handle the new information technologies, and/or by creating open book management?

Change almost always causes the unexpected. The wise anticipate the unexpected, and like you, ask what can we expect and what can be done to counter resistance to what almost anyone would say is a good thing--improved communication. The rub comes when we ask what does so-and-so mean by improved communication? Informing everyone in the organization about each other's pay will meet great resistance. Lower paid workers resent the general knowledge and will be more greatly irritated to learn specifically what those above them are paid more than they are, and those at upper levels prefer to maintain a quiet aloofness about their pay that may be 150 times that of average workers. Improved communication that poses open book management, even though it may not mean such disclosure, would generate great resistance.

To some top managers, improved communication means compliance with their directives. In not just  one major company I know of, improved communication means proactive anti-union messages  strategically circulated by well-respected company representatives to counter union organizing  efforts. Needless to say, such efforts arouse the ire of union leaders. Self-directed teams and a cross-functional trained workforce results from improving workplace communication. Yet these seemingly positive measures have been met with union resistance for fear of loss of union say over work rules and job assignments.

First, we must know what kind of information improved exchange--by who to whom, and for what purpose--we are talking about when we ask about resistance to improved communication. If we are speaking about simplifying too much paper work, resistance most likely will be minimal, unless it means bypassing someone who needs or wants to know. Paper work is most often considered overload; whereas, not getting enough information is its opposite, underload.

Cutting noise out of the system, especially if that noise is physical interference with hearing, is another overload problem to which there will likely be little resistance. Cutting out the psychological distractions and distortion that also cause noise; however, can lead to status conflict. For example, a recent query to The Workplace Doctor asked what might be done to improve the work productivity of four legal secretaries whose work stations were configured in an oval arrangement in an open space surrounded by private offices.

If a proposed remedy of this situation meant opening the walls of all the private offices and assigning that larger space so that attorneys and secretaries might better communicate, even being beautifully walled off by greenery and head-high sound proofing would not prevent massive resistance. Again, one must ask what do you mean by improving communication?

Sherry Devereaux Ferguson and Stewart Ferguson in their book, Organizational Communication, state that attempts to deal with the problems of distortion, omission, and morale take the form of. . .

1. redundancy, or repetition of a message through more than one channel or at different times;
2. verification, or checking out the accuracy of a message by references to additional persons or documents and;
3. bypassing individuals who act as gatekeepers in the organizational chain of authority, such as by open door policies, use of suggestion boxes or anonymous call in lines, employee ombudsmen.

The Fergusons add that these approaches can become the problem. They can generate more messages and new information overload, and or they can undermine authority and the sense of self worth of those in authority.

Resistance will come with almost all significant efforts to improve communication. Coping with resistance entails anticipating and scouting for the sources of resistance. Then meeting it head on by engaging those, who send and receive, or will be affected by the redundancy, verification, and bypassing, in collaborative conversations about what they need and do not need to know to do their jobs more effectively. That is the key to coping. Improving communication is better building bridges. It is making those who are communication impoverished, communication rich. It is a persistent effort to make respect the currency of daily communication.

Will you let me know why you asked? Perhaps then I might be of more explicit help to you.


WEGO  foresees and engages the resistors.  

--Dr. Gorden, The Workplace Doctor

And Now A Follow Up To This Situation. . .

Doctor:

Earlier, I asked, "What kind of resistance can be expected to efforts to improve communication within the workplace? Further, what action can be taken to overcome the expected resistance?" I appreciate the time you took in your response and, as you suggested, will provide you with more information so that you will have a better idea of the kind of communication improvement that we envision.

Briefly, the organizational culture no longer supports the organization's mission - it is now very resistant to change. We have identified the lack of effective communication as a major gap (among other problems) between the current culture and the desired culture; that is, intense distrust among members of various departments. Through a cultural analysis, we have now determined that the organization's survival is threatened by the current culture and have translated this idea to the members; we have appointed new leadership; initiated reorganization; introduced new stories and practices to convey the new vision; and have plans to change the selection process as well as evaluation and reward systems. We also plan to propose one-on-one visits; employee suggestion systems that reward new ideas; open-door policies; anonymous opinion surveys; and brainstorming sessions.

What resistance can we expect to these specific efforts?

The Doctor Answers. . .

Hello Again:

You've undertaken a massive transformation. You have determined that the culture of the past and present does not support your organization's mission, and you sense that distrust among various departments is characteristic of that past/present culture. So you, I assume as part of a management team, you are trying to improve communication and, instill a new culture. Each of the several things you have initiated can generate resistance:

• the intervention that assessed and analyzed your culture and found it defective no doubt raised anxiety; even collecting data and asking for too much too often will meet with resistance.
  
• appointing new leadership and reorganization probably increased the stress.
  
• instating new measures of appraisal put everyone on notice that things are going to be different.

You don't have to wonder what kinds of resistance you will encounter. All you have to do is to ask your people. How all these things have, and are, being done--what is the process--will determine lesser or greater resistance. The more these changes are a top-down bottom-up collaboration the greater will be the feeling that something is being done with us rather than to us.

Consequently, Resistance! The early Mayo Western Electric studies found that employees were cooperative when they were consulted and invited to decide on variables that might improve work group productivity. Conversely, when they were pushed to increase productivity, they were effective in sticking to old norms. My advice for coping is to retreat if you and your team have neglected to make your change effort something that is representatively collaborative.

One company I worked with, rather than assigning new values and creating a mission statement, began with work group meetings soliciting from individuals what were the values they wanted for their workplace. Boeing created a need for change by pointing to accidents in the skies and to the competition. They also used the metaphor of arthritis to dramatize the need for coordination among the different departments. How has your management team shown the workers the need for change and made them feel like part of a collaborative effort? Doing those two things can go a long way to softening resistance.

WEGO is a collaborative process that puts great faith in communication and people.

Bill Gorden, The Workplace Doctor

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