"Making the invisible visible"

Paradoxically, as communication tools advance in abilities and power, they are increasingly taken for granted. Over the last decade, we've experienced a veritable revolution of communication technology. Today, people may contact each other instantly through phone conversations, emails, instant messengers, etc. While these tools allow great potential in organizational communication, more is not necessarily better.

In my work experience, communication misuse has proven to be the greatest detriment to productivity. These instances of misuse include meetings that are called for the sake of having a meeting and conference calls that waste hundreds(or thousands) of workhours at a shot for minimal value. On a given week, I typically have in excess of 20hrs of scheduled meetings and conference calls. Most of these, I don't need to be a part of. One of the worst instances of communication misuse is exemplified by the overwhelming dread of coming back from vacation to the inevitable mountain of emails. Sifting through them, I'd estimate that roughly 90% of my work emails have little to no value.

The real measure of communication success is effectively matching the message, the medium, and the target audience. Too little emphasis is placed on this objective.