Thanks to increased competitiveness and globalisation, many national corporations are today breaching their boundaries and ‘becoming global’.
Effective global communications are therefore becoming more critical to corporate performance and success. Companies must have alignment between parties across cultures and regions. In making sales, foreign customers must be able to fully understand the organisations’ offers. Successful partnerships require that all participants be engaged with the organisations’ goals. For maximum task productivity, employees must be highly committed and working together remotely on a common agenda.
Unfortunately, businesses can find global communications difficult. The intent of written English can be easily misinterpreted across languages; yet translation can be time-consuming, expensive and inadequate. Sometimes there is also a lack of understanding about another culture’s norms. For example, messages conveying ‘winning’, ‘power’ and ‘competitiveness’ may motivate staff from western companies where individualism is highly prized; yet have a lower impact on employees from collectivist regions, such as Vietnam and Thailand.
The solution? Eliminate the written word. Halt the verbal emails, articles and newsletters. Instead, try videoing your intent, being mindful of the diverse audiences that you need to reach. Video’s allow for non-verbal cues to be expressed. They can also incorporate props and other visuals to enhance the message. Video’s are more memorable because they use audio as well as visual sensory stimulation. They allow for new people and remote teams to be more visible and better connected to Head Office. Best of all, videoing need not be any more difficult than taking the time to write an article or email, as cameras are available on all computers today.
Recording screen-casting presentations can also easily and cost-effectively replace written communications. This involves recording the voice of a presenter talking to pictures and other visual cues within a Powerpoint deck.
Finally, encouraging conversation is the most effective communications. Conversation enables parties to understand each other better, leading to greater trust, commitment and organisational success. Two-way electronic conversations over the internet are also cheap, costing the same as a telephone call.
How to encourage people to stop writing and start talking? Now thats another topic requiring a truly global explanation…stay tuned.
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