Communication failures in organisations expose the business to many risks including; rework, high rejection rates of output, schedule blowouts, cost over runs and higher than normal involuntary turnover of personnel.

All of these issues result in a drain on the bottom line and unnecessary distractions for senior management in addressing the symptoms of the communication failures.

This article works through the issues associated with communication failures in distributed teams, suggesting ways to address issues to build a more collaborative and robust organisation.

The Need For Robust Communication

Good communication is at the heart of any group endeavor, whether the group is a small, co-located team or a large, distributed virtual team the need is the same. Maintaining a robust level of communication in a virtual team is a constant challenge faced by all members of the team.

* Business leaders must have an open and collaborative communication channel with their colleagues. Having this will ensure the organisation is coordinated and openly sharing ideas and issues.

* Project managers need to have solid oversight of their projects and the issues and challenges being faced by their personnel regardless of their location. With this, they should be able to predict issues before they occur and facilitate solutions in a timely way.

* Project team members need to be able to communicate freely to ensure work is performed in a coordinated and structured way, avoiding overlaps and gaps in effort. Dependent on the size and structure of the project, this may be direct one to one communication or it may be through a single point of contact within each location. Regardless of the method, those actually charged with doing the work must be able to share ideas, issues and progress.

Causes Of Communication Failures

Communication failures occur in virtual teams for a number of reasons, however, virtually all of the causes of communication failures are the result of the physical and temporal separation of team members.

When individuals and teams are physically separated, regardless of distance, it is very easy to simply forget to talk to one another. It may just be that people get distracted by those in the same location, become engrossed in their own local work or the timing of communications needs are inconvenient due to personal or local commitments, but whatever the cause, this breakdown in communications causes many of the issues.

* Wrong time and wrong place – Often communications failures are the result of team members being in inconvenient time zones to facilitate regular, easy communications, this is at its worst when the teams are separated by more than 9 time zones. This large temporal separation means that communication must be carefully planned rather than organic. Such large separations lead to communications occurring at socially inconvenient times for one or all parties, which can then lead to calls being cancelled.

* Communicating with strangers – many people are uncomfortable meeting and talking to new people in a conventional social environment. Trying to communicate with strangers in a virtual context, when they are just a name and possibly a few personal details is even harder. This is why face to face, or at the least video facilitated meetings can be so effective in building relationships. Without a sense of personal bond, many people will not feel the same need to communicate as they do with those they have met and know reasonably well.

* Communicating across language barriers – Projects will typically establish a common language, this is then the language all personnel are expected to use when communicati...