6th-Grade Word
When I was in second grade my teacher, Mrs. Mayer, taught me a sixth-grade word because I was a good speller, and I guess she wanted to challenge me. The word was "c-o-m-m-u-n-i-c-a-t-i-o-n". Little did I know at the time that the world, my life (and my career for that matter) would revolve around that word.
Wikipedia defines communication as “the process whereby information is imparted by a sender to a receiver via a medium. Communication requires that all parties have an area of communicative commonality... Communication is defined as a process by which we assign and convey meaning in an attempt to create shared understanding.” I’d also add that it relies not only on technology – but very much on people. I think technology and automation will have a hard time displacing the human element in the communication process.
The bottom line for the business world is that good communication is good business, while poor communication can disgruntle the shareholder, panic the employees or ruin the transaction. We’ve recently launched our blog here at ACT Conferencing to facilitate a conversation around communication and some of the tools that enable business communications: audio conferencing, video conferencing and web conferencing. We look forward to sharing some of our observations with you, and more importantly, hearing your input.