Posts

Why Your Company's Communication is Failing (And It's Not What You Think)

Three months ago, I watched a perfectly good $2.3 million project implode because the project manager sent a Slack message that was interpreted three different ways by three different departments. Not because the message was unclear. Not because people weren't paying attention. But because the company had spent so much time focusing on communication "tools" that they'd forgotten how to actually communicate.

That's the problem with 90% of Australian businesses right now. They think communication is about having the right platforms, the prettiest PowerPoints, and the most comprehensive email protocols. They're wrong.

The Real Communication Crisis Nobody Talks About

Here's what I've learned after consulting for everything from mining companies in Perth to tech startups in Melbourne: most communication failures aren't technical problems. They're human problems disguised as technical problems.

Last year alone, I've seen companies spend ridiculous amounts on Slack premium subscriptions, Microsoft Teams upgrades, and fancy project management software. Meanwhile, their teams still don't know how to have a difficult conversation without sending it through seventeen layers of diplomatic bullshit.

The average Australian employee receives 127 emails per day. But here's the kicker - only 23% of those emails actually need to exist. The rest are just people covering their arses or avoiding real conversations.

Why Most "Communication Training" Makes Things Worse

I'll admit something here. Five years ago, I was one of those consultants pushing generic communication workshops. You know the type - role-playing exercises where Karen from accounting pretends to be an angry customer while Dave from IT practices his "active listening" face.

Absolute waste of time.

The problem with cookie-cutter communication training is that it treats communication like a one-size-fits-all skill. But communication in a Bunnings warehouse is completely different from communication in a law firm. And both are different from communication in a startup where half the team works remotely and the other half thinks Zoom is still a novelty.

What actually works? Context-specific training that acknowledges your industry's quirks, your team's personalities, and your company's actual problems. Not hypothetical scenarios about handling difficult customers when your team barely interacts with customers in the first place.

The Three Communication Killers Killing Your Business

1. Meeting Mania

Australian businesses are absolutely obsessed with meetings. We have meetings to plan meetings. We have meetings to discuss why the last meeting didn't work. We have "quick sync-ups" that somehow last 45 minutes and achieve nothing measurable.

Here's a controversial opinion: 60% of your meetings should be emails. Another 30% should be quick conversations. The remaining 10% - those are your actual meetings.

But nobody wants to hear this because meetings make people feel important. They make managers feel like they're managing. They give everyone an excuse to avoid actual work for an hour.

2. Death by Documentation

The second killer is what I call "documentation theatre." Companies that create elaborate systems for documenting everything, tracking everything, and reporting everything - while forgetting to actually do anything.

I once worked with a Brisbane construction company where project managers spent more time updating project management software than actually managing projects. They had beautiful Gantt charts and detailed progress reports. They also had a 40% project overrun rate because nobody was communicating about actual problems until they became disasters.

Documentation should support communication, not replace it. But somewhere along the way, we decided that if something isn't written down in three different systems with proper timestamps and approval workflows, it didn't happen.

3. The Feedback Vacuum

This one's personal. Australian workplace culture has this weird relationship with feedback. We're simultaneously too polite to give honest feedback and too proud to ask for it. So we end up with this passive-aggressive feedback culture where important issues get discussed in car parks and coffee queues but never in actual feedback sessions.

Real feedback isn't just annual performance reviews where everyone pretends to be surprised by problems that have been obvious for months. Real feedback is ongoing, specific, and actionable. It's also uncomfortable, which is why most companies avoid it.

What Actually Works (Based on 15 Years of Fixing This Mess)

Start With Leadership Communication Audits

Before you fix anything else, figure out how your leadership team actually communicates. Not how they think they communicate. How they actually communicate.

I do this by shadowing executives for a week. No surveys, no self-reporting. Just observation. You'd be amazed how many senior managers think they're great communicators while their teams describe them as "impossible to read" or "constantly changing direction."

Kill the Communication Middlemen

Most communication problems are created by too many people being involved in simple conversations. If someone needs information from someone else, they should be able to get it directly. Not through their manager, who asks their manager, who emails the other department's manager, who eventually forwards the request to the person who actually has the answer.

This drives me absolutely mental, but it's standard practice in most large organisations.

Create Communication Consequences

Here's where I might lose some people: communication should have measurable outcomes and consequences. Just like sales targets or safety metrics.

If your project updates are consistently unclear, that should affect your performance review. If your team meetings consistently run over time without achieving objectives, that should have consequences. If you send emails that require follow-up emails to clarify what you meant, you need communication skills training that actually addresses your specific problems.

Companies that treat communication as optional or "soft skill" inevitably have communication problems. Companies that treat it as a core competency with real expectations and real consequences tend to communicate better.

The Technology Trap (And How to Avoid It)

Technology can definitely improve communication. Slack can be brilliant for quick updates. Teams can streamline collaboration. Project management tools can keep everyone aligned.

But technology can't fix fundamental communication problems. If your team doesn't know how to prioritise information, giving them more communication channels just means they'll overwhelm each other more efficiently.

If managers don't know how to give clear direction, upgrading to fancier video conferencing won't help. If your company culture discourages honest feedback, no amount of anonymous feedback tools will create psychological safety.

I've seen companies spend six figures on communication platforms while ignoring the fact that their senior leadership team hasn't had an honest conversation about strategy in two years.

The Melbourne Example Nobody Talks About

Here's a case study that perfectly illustrates everything I've been saying. Melbourne-based marketing agency, about 50 employees, growing fast but struggling with internal communication.

They tried everything. New project management software, weekly all-hands meetings, communication workshops, even hired a "Director of Internal Communications" (I'm not making this up).

Nothing worked.

The breakthrough came when they realised their communication problems weren't about systems or skills. They were about trust. Specifically, the creative team didn't trust the account management team to represent their work properly to clients. So they started going direct to clients, which undermined account managers, which created tension, which led to poor communication across the entire agency.

The solution wasn't better communication tools. It was weekly creative-account management alignment sessions where both teams could discuss client feedback directly. Plus a simple rule: no creative work gets presented to clients without both teams in the room.

Six months later, client satisfaction up 30%, internal conflict down significantly, and project delivery times improved by 25%.

The lesson? Fix the relationship problems, and the communication problems often solve themselves.

Where Most Companies Go Wrong (And How to Get It Right)

The biggest mistake I see is treating communication as a training problem when it's usually a systems problem, a culture problem, or a leadership problem.

Training helps when people want to communicate better but don't know how. It doesn't help when the real problem is that people don't feel safe giving honest feedback, or when organizational structure makes effective communication nearly impossible.

Before you book another communication workshop, ask yourself:

Do people in your organization feel safe disagreeing with their managers?
Can important information travel from front-line staff to senior leadership without getting filtered or delayed?
Do your systems and processes support clear communication, or do they create unnecessary complexity?
Are your communication expectations clear and consistent across all levels?

If you answered no to any of these questions, workshops aren't going to fix your communication problems. Structural changes might.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Communication ROI

Here's something that might upset some people: not all communication problems are worth solving.

Some communication inefficiencies are just the cost of doing business. Some personality conflicts can't be resolved through better communication techniques. Some information gaps exist because the information isn't actually important enough to justify the effort of sharing it.

Good communication strategy isn't about optimizing every interaction. It's about identifying which communication failures actually impact business outcomes and focusing your efforts there.

A miscommunication that delays a project by two days might be worth addressing. Daily confusion about lunch catering probably isn't worth a formal process improvement initiative.

This might sound obvious, but you'd be surprised how many companies treat every communication hiccup as a crisis requiring immediate systematic intervention.

Moving Forward: What Actually Needs to Happen

Australian businesses need to stop thinking about communication as a soft skill and start thinking about it as operational infrastructure. Like accounting or IT or compliance.

This means having clear communication standards, regular communication audits, and yes, consequences for poor communication just like there are consequences for poor performance in other areas.

It also means accepting that good communication requires ongoing investment and attention. Not just a workshop every couple of years when things get really bad.

The companies that figure this out first are going to have significant competitive advantages. Better projects, faster decision-making, higher employee engagement, and probably better customer relationships too.

The companies that keep treating communication as an afterthought are going to keep having the same expensive problems over and over again.

Your choice.

Want to improve your team's communication but not sure where to start? Stop trying to fix everything at once. Pick one specific communication problem that's actually costing you money, time, or talent. Fix that first. Then move on to the next one.