3 Ways CIOs Can Improve IT Communications

Good communications among all the stakeholders of IT is extremely highly valued, but often elusive. Getting (and keeping) everybody on the same page can be a real challenge.

Here are three powerful ways I’ve found to help technically oriented people improve communication, both within IT and between IT and the rest of the organization.

1. Embrace Storytelling

Technical people operate at a detailed level and with great precision. Which is awesome when you’re developing software or fine tuning a storage network, but boring and confusing to a good story. And stories are an essential and effective way to communicate. A story neatly packages essential information and shapes it in a way that makes a compelling point.

And that’s what IT communications should do.

To get your point across, it is necessary to step back from the details. You must be able to summarize. You must also be able to make a point. You must be able to inform and persuade. Stories help you do all of this - whether the audience is one other person or a group, inside of IT or outside of IT.

As technical people, we need to rise to this challenge. Letting go of nuance is hard, but necessary for good communications. Many of the details we can get hung up on don’t contribute a lot to the story. While they may help to make it technically correct, many are just distractions from the essential point. The trick is to figure out which ones to include and which ones to leave out. Use the Goldilocks principle and include just the right amount of details. And like a child’s fairy tale, which is clear and compact and compelling, each detail that’s left in should be there for a reason.

2. Establish Patterns

The details that we didn’t want to interfere with our stories are in fact crucial to getting the work of IT done. So, we need to have ways for these details to flow freely but effectively to and from those who need to exchange them. I’m always amazed at how hard this is, even on the smallest of teams. Here’s where patterns come in.

Establishing a pattern for communications can really help technical people flourish. After all, patterns are second nature to the technically-oriented. The two patterns that I find most helpful to my team and me are the weekly meeting of direct reports and the weekly one-on-one meetings.

The value of the regular meeting is that it establishes a consistent channel of communication for all sorts of important details. The agenda and decorum for a direct reports meeting should allow for ad hoc discussions to emerge from anyone on any topic. Making this a “safe haven” for open communication will help surface insights and opinions and ideas that might not otherwise get shared.

If that’s the case, then why meet with the same people but in a one-on-one format? Two reasons: first, to get down to the next level of detail and to demonstrate that your interest in and support of that person’s particular area of responsibility. Second, and more importantly, to ensure there is always an open channel of communication where the two of you have direct, unfettered access to each other. It’s powerful to have that in place in case either of you need it. And once it’s set up, it will get used for much more than status updates.

3. Teach Writing

Writing needs special attention. Embedded in the task are many of the communications challenges outlined above, along with two additional challenges: writing is both asynchronous and permanent. The advantage of immediate reactions, feedback, or clarifying questions is lost. Everything has to be packaged up neatly and completely while still being concise and compelling. That alone is a significant challenge, but writing also brings with it an air of permanence that makes the task that much more important and intimidating.

But writing also comes with a unique benefit - the ability to review and edit communications before sharing them. And this advantage is the key thing to teach, along with insights and explanations on why you suggest certain edits to someone’s work.

Emphasizing and teaching ways to write that are friendly and helpful to the reader are of paramount importance. Just as we strive to make technology easy to use, we must also make our communications easy to use – particularly the written ones. Toward that end, a focus on using a conversational tone goes a long way in improving IT communications - as does adopting the voice of a patient and supportive (and never condescending) teacher.

It’s hard to understate the importance of good communications to IT. It takes extra time, energy, and focus to make and sustain improvements. But over time these efforts can pay huge dividends in the effectiveness and perception of IT in your organization. It’s always worth the effort.