A teacher lecturing a class, a salesman telling a customer about the virtues of a product, a manager expounding the need for quality in manufacturing of a product, a supervisor laying down productivity guidelines, are all situations where messages need to be communicated. They require the qualities of a good communicator to get the message across in the most effective way -- to be understood and produce the right response.

In a business situation one is communicating something or the other at any given point. What you need to do therefore is to put some zing into the communications to motivate others and get them to do, behave, or think as you want them to. In an increasingly competitive world, one of the first things that you have to do is to communicate, and communicate with something "extra" or "different" in the form of a benefit. And the challenge lies in communicating clearly, meaningfully, and effectively in the right form and media (channel) for the desired response.

It is said that in an organization every interaction includes a business level and a personal level. The business level gets work done; the personal level satisfies the participant's need for attention, recognition and acceptance of a point of view. Coming up with a creative solution to a problem is only half the battle won. You must be able to gain support for your solution and have it implemented.

You have to be more persuasive. And to do this it may be worth understanding the "Needs Hierarchy" of people whom you are communicating with. It basically concerns an answer to "What's in it for me?" in your audience on five levels:

Level 1 : Basic needs
                Purchasing power

Level 2 : Environment needs
                Security, Profit, Success, Systems

Level 3 : Simple personal needs
                Pride, recognition, peer respect*

Level 4 : Complex individual needs
                Achievement, Accountability, Responsibility, Growth

Level 5 : Transcendent needs
                Purpose, Significance, Love

One final success secret is to avoid being against anything. Instead, be for something. For instance, instead of being against a company policy, be for an improved policy. In such cases, what happens is that whatever you are against works against you. You begin fighting it and become part of the problem. But when you state what you are for, you begin focussing on the potential for positive change. And that is good for communications too.

Looking ahead
Since the 80s corporations have been experimenting with change and change management, either as a continuous process or in other forms. A rough template for communications in change can be summarized as:
• Gather data about customers and the business environment
• Define organizational strengths
• Build on those strengths and make data available to help project a future course
• Develop a strategy to reach the future state
• Prepare leaders to mobilize physical and human resources to achieve goals
• Deploy the strategy organization-wide
• Build in a feedback loop which includes employees
• Make midcourse corrections
• Measure results

Within the existing realities of communication technologies one of the challenges facing us is the accelerating technological convergence between telecommunications, computing, information products and mass communication. With this it will be possible to gain access to a rich collection of information and data available to us today. In the next few years the role of information systems will become more important than ever. Organizations will be competing through information. Effective management of information and information technology will give organizations that crucial edge in the marketplace which is required today to be a leader