Build communication
A flat organization requires excellent communication to function properly.
Good lateral communication between different departments and geographies starts with good vertical communication between management and lower levels of the company. If you don’t set the tone of open communication, the flow of ideas will never start.
Your middle managers and direct reports can help you refine and communicate your messages but the genesis of the culture has to occur in the CEO’s office.
“It’s important that the communication is coming from the top management,” Sparrvik says. “If you communicate through your middle management, employees might not believe certain things. Especially in this day and age, with the Internet and communication spreading so quickly, it’s important that the communication is coming from the same source at the top of the company.
“However, all information doesn’t have to come from the top. Certain information, such as big, critical things about the recession, major strategic changes, that has to come from the top. But if it’s more tactical or day-to-day, that might not be necessary.”
All communication doesn’t have to start at the top, but the tone for communication has to be set at the top. The concept of managing by walking around has become something of a business cliché, an extension of the often-used open-door policy. But Sparrvik says that’s not enough.
You can manage by walking around each day, engaging your employees on their turf. But the real success of personal engagement begins with the attitude you project. Employees can see you walking around the office each day, but beyond that, they have to know that you’re willing to listen. The only way to convey that level of approachability is to put it into practice, to take the extra time to listen.
“Personality is No. 1, the most important aspect of communicating with employees,” Sparrvik says. “Anyone can say they do management by walking around, but if you don’t project that you’re approachable, it doesn’t help to walk around because people won’t approach you anyway. Once you’ve projected an open personality and people feel OK about approaching you, then you can talk about things like having an open-door policy and having accessibility. People need to be able to stop by your office and feel like they aren’t always interrupting you.
“If you have a personality and a leadership style that is overly stern, it doesn’t help you to have an open-door policy. Your personality needs to fit with the open-door policy or people will walk right by the open door. If you aren’t open and engaging, people will feel like they don’t want to stop by and bother you, and then they won’t ask the tricky questions that might be on their minds.”
How you handle personal communication extends to how you handle group communication. The impressions that employees develop about your personality when you’re walking the halls will carry over to group meetings. If you’re not listening to your employees on a casual, one-on-one basis, don’t expect to get great input from them in a group setting.
“Even if it looks good that you’re communicating with hundreds of employees, nobody is going to ask you the tricky questions if they feel that leadership doesn’t want to hear that,” Sparrvik says. “So you have to understand that making communication a two-way street with your employees is much more complex than simply saying you have an open-door policy. It is built on accessibility all throughout management, and that starts at the top.”
Sparrvik says you should also allow yourself to be accessible through many different communication avenues. Most business leaders prefer face-to-face engagement whenever possible, but you should empower your employees in the field or at other locations to reach you via phone or e-mail. Make yourself as accessible as possible via those mediums.
“Remember that communication also has to be practical,” he says. “Whether it’s e-mail or cell phone or however they approach you, your people have to be able to reach you through the various communication vehicles available to them.”
