Communication

Instant communication has become a way of modern life. We take for granted the fact that we live in an age where technology allows us to achieve so much.

It's not too long ago that mobile phones the size and weight of house brick appeared on the market and if they were big and heavy their price tags were not far behind.

Now, most families own several, tiny, mobile phones and most businesses could not survive in competitive markets without mobile technology.

You can sit in a seat on a plane and make a telephone call. You can sit in the seat in your car and plot your position to within metres thanks to satellite communications technology. You can shop on the Internet and you can ping digital holiday snaps around the world in seconds to you envious friends.

Media communication, perhaps more than any other, underlines the way in which we have grown to demand this instant provision of information.

We now expect our TV screens to be filled by live images from around the world. And they are of an amazing quality compared with the early days of satellite TV transmission when screens regularly flickered and faded and correspondents sounded as though they were a million miles away instead of merely across the Atlantic.

Yet, in the midst of all this incredible technological advance, it's easy, at times, to forget about some critical aspects of communication, the sort of inter personal communication which can make such a difference to people's lives both at home and at work.

It may be easy to communicate with clients and customers on the other side of the world, but we may struggle to communicate with colleagues on the other side of our desks.

Yet, this type of contact and dialogue is surely the most important in any business no matter how large or small it may be.

How often at work do you hear people complain about not knowing something or being kept in the dark?

And ask yourself too how your business communicates with its most important asset (its staff) and its most important stakeholders and customers.

I am not certain enough businesses have taken account of the need to retain a degree of “ordinary” communication with staff in their rush to each new market and place themselves at the forefront of the race to meet instant demands.

Like many problems and challenges, tackling these communications issues may be difficult, but the rewards, surely are enormous?

If you think it may be a tough task in your business, spare a though for Vodafone who communicated their latest figure to the world yesterday (Tuesday). The mobile phone giant made a £14.9bn loss last year - a record for a UK firm - after writing down the value of assets.

I wonder if that means fewer people are communicating with each other?