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TALENT MANAGEMENT MAGAZINE

Failure to Communicate
by Marshall Goldsmith

As anyone who regularly checks this space knows, I am a big

proponent of good communication in businesses. The quality of
information flow within an organization often is a good indicator of
the quality of the organization, period.

Sadly, this attribute is lacking in many companies. And in this day

and age, enterprises that suffer too many breakdowns in
communication just won't survive.

When I see companies like this, I sometimes think of the giant

sauropods, the distinctive-looking dinosaurs with gargantuan
bodies, long necks and tiny heads. These beasts must have been
an impressive sight to behold. They were the largest creatures
ever to walk the earth, and many weighed more than 100 tons.

Yet, because of their physiology, it took could take minutes for

nerve impulses to travel to their brains from the other parts of
their enormous bodies. (By contrast, human beings can almost
instantaneously discern if they've, say, touched a hot stove.)

These dinosaurs' imposing size was simultaneously their greatest

strength and weakness.

Similarly, many "dinosaur" organizations of our time are daunting

in their sheer size.

Because of their mass and structure, though, exchanges of

information and ideas move through these enterprises about as
efficiently as bodily signals inside a brontosaurus.

Specifically, I recall an experience I had early in my career with

the old AT&T, when I was invited to corporate headquarters to
speak to one of its top executives.

I was pretty green at the time, and I remember feeling really

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intimidated as I walked past rows of secretaries, miles of carpet

and lots of pictures of dead old men before arriving at the palatial
office of this bigwig.

When I finally got there, the executive didn't even bother

introducing himself.

Instead, he looked at me condescendingly and asked, "How much

experience do you have working in Fortune 10 corporations?"

I nervously replied that I had none, but I had a lot of experience

in a wide range of other companies. He seemed completely
unimpressed.

I then enthusiastically described what I thought would be

important changes for the organizations of the future and how the
traditional AT&T - including its leaders - might need to change. I
also explained how the company's bureaucracy, high overhead
and stifling corporate culture might not work in the "new world" of
business.

Our session didn't last long. He made it clear he had more

important things to do than talk with some neophyte who couldn't
possibly know more than he did.

Needless to say, I left this meeting feeling humiliated and angry.

In retrospect, though, I wish I'd told him he was right: I didn't

know how to prevent an obsolete dinosaur such as the old AT&T
from barreling toward its own extinction.

I might not have been an expert in the largest companies in the

world at the time, but I didn't have to be to predict the eventual
outcome - anyone could see AT&T's hierarchy and bureaucratic
structure were not going to work in a rapidly shifting business
climate.

To borrow a phrase from "Cool Hand Luke," what AT&T had was a
failure to communicate. The company's leaders (who believed
they knew it all to begin with) couldn't honestly and openly
discuss future issues and challenges, so it continued to do more of
the same.

Of course, we all know what happened in the ensuing years: AT&T

deteriorated, as it neglected to adapt to a quickly evolving
market. After a long, slow decline, the organization - one of the

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largest and most successful in history - was bought by SBC, a

company that actually spun off of the original A&T in the 1980s.

SBC bought AT&T for about one-third of the price the Procter &
Gamble paid for Gillette - a razor blade company! Who could have
ever guessed a company that important could fall that far?

In my next column, I'll talk about common challenges to

organizational communication and how you can avoid sharing the
former AT&T's fate.

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith's 24 books include "What Got You

Here Won't Get You There" - a New York Times best-seller,
Wall Street Journal #1 business book and Harold Longman
Award winner for Business Book of the Year. His latest
book "Succession: Are You Ready?" - is the newest edition
to the Harvard Business 'Memo to the CEO' series. His
personal website,
http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com/, contains
hundreds of his articles and videos.

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