One of the reasons organizations struggle so much with communication, when they're trying to change is that it's a complicated undertaking. Communication just by itself is very complex. We've got multiple senders and all kinds of groups of receivers, both individual and teams, and so on. There's lots of filters and noise running through the organization. We've got all kinds of mediums sending stuff out. And of course, all of that adds up to just an enormous overload of information.

Organizations are complicated things, regardless of their size, variety of different functions, different agendas for different rules, different people may have different agendas. We've got geography issues, sometimes we're spread all over the city or over the whole country, or perhaps around the world. We've got all kinds of power and authority issues and we've got variable trust levels that run throughout the organization. And of course, the pace of change is increasing. It's getting more complicated all the time. Let's try to understand how complicated communication is even in its most simple form.

What I'd like you to do is I'd like you to think about in your mind's eye go forward to Friday. It's the end of the week, and it's later in the afternoon, early evening, and you're finally home. And there's only one other person in the room with you. It's been a long week. And we're going to have a really quick conversation here. This could be your husband, this could be your wife, significant other, whatever it is, but it's a very low threat situation.

There may even be a glass of good wine or a cold beer involved. You're sitting in your favorite chair and the topic of conversation is so what's up for the weekend? How many ways can that conversation get you in trouble? My guess is, if you're like me, those conversations come up. Frequently, and sometimes it's a reasonably quick conversation, and we will figure out what's going on for the weekend. And we'll have another glass of wine.

In other cases, it is a struggle. There's all kinds of issues that are going on in the relationship. And we're trying to figure out what's going on for the weekend. And sometimes we end up going through the weekend, and never really figure out what we were trying to accomplish in the weekend has come and gone and never get back to work. So even just between two people, communication is complicated. Back in the early 60s, a gentleman by the name of Albert mehrabian of UCLA, this was very early in his career.

In the last I heard he was still actually Professor MRIs at UCLA. He did a study and this study looked at one of the major component parts of any communication, and he found 7% of a communication was the words that are being Pass back and forth. So if you think about the conversation about what's up for the weekend between you and your husband, so 7% of that overall communication are the words that are coming out of each of your mouth. 38% is the vocal intonation. It could be the speed, could be the volume. Could be the long pauses could be the lilt of sarcasm, could be the accusatory tone, could be any number of things.

But that's 38% of it. 55% of it has nothing to do with the words or the vocal nature of the communication it has to do with what's your body doing. Now, my wife can peg me from across the room. If I roll my eyes at one of her suggestions about what's up for the weekend, then, of course, then we're having another conversation. It's not likely to be about what's up for the weekend. What's fascinating is the Arabian did this original study back in 67.

And I think it was some of his graduate students from back Then who have stuck around this field of communication over the years, and they just recently redid his study thinking, surely, the numbers are different now that we've got so many different ways of communicating. And they redid the study as close as they could to the original standards of that study, they introduced all of these other forms of communication. And they found numbers were the same. The words on an email, the literal text in an email, or a text message, really count for very little of the actual message. You can put in an email, you can put bold letters, different colors, emoticons, exclamation marks, all you want, that's to try and get across 38%. But of course, in using those kinds of technologies, what we don't have we assume the behavior behind it, but of course that's not there because we're not seeing it.

So we Have a problem here. When it comes to even simple communication, you probably have seen this model for interpersonal communication before. My guess is this has been around for a long time. It's very popular in lots of management courses, and so on communication skills courses, but the complexity of communication, it's helpful for us to understand, especially when you laminate this on top of the big organization. Communication is simply a game of pitch and catch between sender and receiver. And it starts with a sender coming up with an idea or some intention that they want to get across.

And they're going to choose an appropriate channel for distribution and they'll send the message and then we'll send the message across to a receiver who the receiver is doing whatever the receiver is doing, and in comes this message, and then they're going to interpret what is this message really all about? And they will internally respond to that message, at least the message that they think is being sent Now, you can see all kinds of problems just in this. But this message is going through all kinds of noise and filters, whether it's simply you and your husband or your wife, and other background noise in the room, or what is the state of the union of the relationship at this point? or How has your week been? Or have you seen much of each other this week? Or of course, when you think about this, and organization, you've got all kinds of other noise and all kinds of other filters.

So there's one of the first problems but anyway, this receiver gets the message and they will then turn and become if they really want to do something, they will first of all determine if the message needs a response. Is this person important enough? Is this topic important enough for me to respond? And then they will decide? Do I really know what's going on here? Or do I need more information?

Or have I got an answer for them then they will choose a medium and send response. And that response goes back through. Maybe it's the same, maybe it's a different set of noise and filters to the first person who was the sender, but who is now the receiver. And they received this response and they will internally interpret and respond to the question maybe for further communication, maybe we need more explanation. And around it goes. It is lovely when it is a really quick conversation.

And we can figure out what's going on for the weekend and we can get in get into the weekend and another glass of wine, but more often, we go around this two or three or four times and we will get derailed. Imagine what it is like when you laminate the complexity of your organizational system. On top of this, we have got multiple senders and a myriad of receivers and an unprecedented amount of noise and filters. So communication that gets pushed out into the ether and hope somebody picks it up which is often what happens With change related information, there's no hope of it landing because communication is complicated. Does any of this sound vaguely familiar to you and your organization