Communication lies at the heart of any business. In fact I would even go so far as to say that without communication there can be no business. As a draughtsman I quickly had to learn that you must assume the person who was looking at your drawing knew nothing. If it is true that experts are people who have made lots of mistakes then I am a super expert.

You should never write as though you were having a conversation. When so much of communication is usually down to visual clues in a conversation when those visual clues are not available communication becomes much harder. You should be conversational (e.g. write using the kind of words you might use if you were having a conversation) but not as though you were having a conversation. Writing is far more complex than this.

A little while ago I was involved in a project where we had to redevelop part of a web site. To compound the problem both parts were tending to be referred to by the same name. I was frustrated that they couldn’t understand what I was talking about and they were frustrated that I couldn’t understand what they were talking about. It was only because I said something that immediately made the other person see we were talking about different things that suddenly we started making sense to each other.

The real trick is to write in such a way that you communicate your message without overdoing the detail. So use few words but don’t assume that the other person knows what you are talking about. Clearly there are good reasons for such thinking and many organizations take that advice to heart and it becomes policy. Any communication expert who studies business communication will tell you that such things need to be handled very carefully to keep employees and team members fully engaged.

Is it true that not everyone can be trusted with information? Well, information is power and if you power-up those who cannot control their integrity levels or choose not to, then in a way giving them the information makes you an accessory to their actions. For instance, many folks have a lot of knowledge, experience, observations, insight and original thoughts.

But, like water it does flow, information, like living organisms want to be free. Thus, the information just like water stopped in the river by beavers, well, eventually it will find a way, it always does. Communication is about the transfer of information, and it is important for all companies, and organizations to do communication audits to insure the right information is being passed on.

There is little doubt that the business world locally, nationally and globally has been forever changed by the information age. Today, the world is closer together than ever before and an economic crisis in any one country has far-reaching effects elsewhere around the world. But, what will these new technologies be that increase businesses communications speed of transmission and bandwidth be like? No it will not be infinite by any means, but compared to what we have now it will be.

Soon, we will have super small devices that operate by voice and eventually by thought. Just think what this will mean for your business endeavors. Well, think about it for a second, you can collaborate on designs. This may increase the effective of cell phone type communication by a factor of three.