Inter-Departmental Communication
by Arlyne Diamond, Ph.D.

Why is it that highly educated and intelligent people from one department don't communicate effectively with people from another department? They are all speaking the same language, aren't they?

Clients of mine complain frequently about their interactions with those in other areas in the company. Both the people doing the complaining and those being complained about are well respected, considered ethical, and liked by their peers. So what's going on?

Is it that there is such animosity between departments that members deliberately sabotage each other? Well, maybe sometimes, but not usually. Usually there is a significant breakdown in both the quality and quantity of communication across silos or sandboxes. Let's look at the following examples:

In our first example there are several departments involved with getting a new version of the software product to general public release. The on-going disagreements typically involve the sales, product marketing, software development, finance, and corporate marketing departments.

Sales people often complain: "Why can't engineers understand that the customer needs more features? I can't sell these without giving my customers what they want." Those responsible for product marketing realize the necessity of freezing the features, in order to get the product into beta-test so that improvements can be made before releasing it for general sales. Developers have their own creative ideas about the features to be added to the product. Arguing in favor of earlier release are both the marketing and finance departments. Marketing is concerned about reputation and loss of market share if the product is not released quickly and finance is afraid that lack of sales will result in significant loss of revenue.

Another common example of mis-communication between departments occurs between any engineering group and the recruiters in H.R. Engineering managers often complain that H.R. sends them the worst possible candidates for a job opening. No matter how detailed and clear the manager is in his or her job request, the H.R. representative rarely offers them good candidates to interview. On the other hand, the recruiters from H.R. are frustrated at the long list of skills demanded in the job descriptions. One H.R. person recently said to me, "I'll need to find the perfect combination of Mr. Spock and Superman to meet their request." While these two vastly different styles of communication are grappling with the problem, candidates who send in resumes often wonder why they were not considered for openings they felt met their educational and experience backgrounds. 

To add to the problem, hiring managers are frustrated at what they see as a weak recruitment effort on the part of H.R., particularly now in this very challenging job market. One hiring manager recently said he was at his company's booth at a job fair and noticed that there was nothing exciting about the booth or the H.R. recruiters who sat quietly talking among themselves passively waiting for potential candidates to come forth. instead of gathering resumes and being inviting to those who did, they screened quickly and harshly, and rejected many good applicants. Once they actually turned down someone meeting all this hiring manager's needs because the applicant only had two and half years of experience and the job description called for three years. My client cried to me, "Don't they know how desperate we are and how tight the current job market is here in the Bay Area?"

Why does this inter-departmental lack of communication happen so often? Is it that staff in different departments really ignore the needs of those in others? Is it deliberate sabotage or just plain stupidity?

No, I believe the real cause of problems such as these stems from a lack of clear communication across different disciplines and departments. This lack of communication comes about because:

Everyone involved believes they are too busy to informally inform and question others. They have their goals and objectives to complete in a timely manner.

	Many managers still believe in an archaic form of management demanding all communication go up the chain of command, rather than through cross-functional teams. In this manner, they can control all decisions, which are made at the top and presumably communicated down the chain.
	Styles of thinking, decision-making and handling conflict and disagreement are vastly different for dissimilar personality types. Since people tend to select their professions based on their personalities, sometimes there are extreme differences across departments.
	Goals, objectives and rewards are based on vastly different things in different departments, such that one group is rewarded for something that is diametrically opposed to the goals of another department. For example, making sales quickly requires different decisions than creating a quality product with the most cost-effective group of product features.

Specifically, in the first example:

	Upper management needs to bring together key players in the different departments so that they can explain their perspective to each other. Communication and cooperation at every level need to be modeled by the executive team, under the direction of the CEO.
	Parameters need to be developed for each group so that they all tie together to meet the corporate vision and mission. These parameters (including values) need to be promoted and agreed to at all levels in all departments.
	Cross-functional teams and/or task forces should be encouraged to meet regularly to discuss progress and problems with skilled professional facilitation.
	Communication courses focusing on styles of thinking and communication need to be added to on-going training.
	Every major product line should have someone assigned as the final arbiter of all disputes. This person should report directly to the CEO and have authority to cross all relevant functional boundaries.
	Rewards and recognitions need to be designed to take the team work and cooperation into account.

In the second example, the primary difficulty arises because H.R. is usually being asked to recruit for staff with skills about which they know little or nothing. In order to be successful and to meet the real needs of the requiring managers, communication needs to be improved considerably.

	Managers need to be taught how to analyze their job needs and then write a job description based on it; not on a data-sheet looking wish list.
	H.R. needs to learn the key technical requirements of each manager through careful discussion and questions such that the recruiter really understands what is needed and what would be an extra bonus.
	Realistic information needs to be communicated across departments as to the state of the job-market, the competition for people, the employment packages being offered by others, and how best to compete in order to entice the best possible recruits.

In both cases, and in most others, the real culprit is lack of clear communication across all channels. Innocent, hard-working, intelligent and thoughtful people wind up in horrible conflict with each other due to a lack of attention to this need at the highest levels of management.

Communication and cooperation are the key ingredients in the successful corporation of today.