The Case for Inefficient Communication

Digital communication technologies have greatly improved many aspects of our personal lives and transformed how we work, but they have also created the new challenge of information overload. Many organizations are combating information overload by emphasizing the need for brevity in internal communications. While these efforts should be applauded, there are circumstances in which brevity works against the objective of communications.

11 March 2024

Digital technology has dramatically changed how we communicate. The advent of technologies like the internet, email, instant messaging apps, and social media platforms has made it possible for people to quickly and inexpensively connect with friends, family, and colleagues from anywhere in the world and at any time. This has greatly enhanced our personal relationships and transformed the way we do business. It has also created new challenges like information overload. To their credit, many organizations have tried to counter the problem of information overload by emphasizing the need for organizational communications to be as short and to the point as possible. Unfortunately, this can create a new set of problems for communications aimed at building support for critical organizational changes.

Modern digital communication technologies have greatly enhanced our personal relationships in many ways. We can now instantly share moments, whether through photos, videos, or real-time video calls, with family and friends who are many miles away from us. Birthdays, anniversaries, and even the simple joys of daily life can be shared and celebrated from afar, bridging the relationship gap that physical distance once created.

Our work lives have also been transformed by modern digital communication technologies. Employees and clients can now cheaply and easily interact with each other from almost anywhere in the world. This has opened up new opportunities for businesses to expand their reach into diverse markets that were inaccessible in the past. It has also allowed for more efficient and streamlined workflows, as team members can now easily communicate and coordinate in real time without being physically present in the same location.

While modern digital communication technologies have improved many aspects of our personal and professional lives, they have also introduced new challenges. One of the biggest of these challenges is information overload. The ease at which we can now communicate with each other has resulted in people regularly receiving seemingly endless streams of emails, social media notifications, instant messages, and digital advertisements. Many of us now receive so many communications that we can no longer take in and comprehend all of the information we receive on a daily basis.

To combat the issue of information overload, many organizations have begun encouraging brevity in internal communications. These efforts aim to reduce the time employees spend processing information and thus hopefully mitigate the effects of information overload. By emphasizing the need for concise communications, organizations are striving to make it easier for people to sift through the mass of information they regularly receive and quickly identify what is relevant and important to them.

While the trend towards concise digital communications serves practical purposes and organizations should be applauded for trying to help staff overcome the problem of information overload, short communications also have their downsides. For example, it is often challenging to elicit emotional responses in an audience via short communications – and this can be a big problem for communications aimed at building desire and support for organizational change initiatives.

Most of us like to think we are rational beings, especially regarding business matters. We want to believe that if someone simply tells us the reasons why an organizational change is needed and the reasons make sense, then we will support the change. But in reality, this is often not enough to get people to support a change. Whether we like to admit it or not, emotion plays a very large role in creating desire and support for change, regardless of whether the change relates to personal or business matters. For this reason, short business communications containing bullet point lists of the benefits of making a change and the risks of not making a change rarely create the type and level of support required for critical organizational changes to succeed. Simply put, such communications do not create the level of emotion required for people to feel compelled to support an initiative. Longer, more complex, often story-like communications are necessary to develop such levels of emotion and support.

While many business communications can and should be kept as short and to the point as possible, an exception should be made for communications aimed at creating desire and support for critical organizational changes. These communications need to elicit an emotional response from staff and stakeholders to achieve their objectives, and longer communications are typically required to create such a response.

Modern digital communication technologies have greatly enhanced many aspects of our personal and professional lives, but they have also created the new problem of information overload. Organizations are doing the right thing when they try to combat information overload by emphasizing the need for communications to be as short and to the point as possible. But as the old saying goes, for every rule there is an exception – and the exception to this rule is communications aimed at creating desire and support for organizational changes. Emotion plays a significant role in creating desire and support for changes, and short communications simply are often not up to the task.