Hi, this is Jim Whitehurst, president of IBM. And I want to spend a few minutes talking about the importance of communication.

Now we all know that communication is vitally important to create context and ensure that teams can be well coordinated. But I want to specifically address one area of communication that I think is becoming more and more important, as the context in which we live and the complexity in which businesses operate continues to increase.

In the past, I think many leaders looked at communication as a way to provide clarity for what people need to do. And going back, you know, 100 years when many people were doing very rote tasks, providing clear, detailed, specific guidance in what people did was really important. Because ultimately, the sum total of work was many people doing these specific tasks that kind of added up to the whole goal of the company. But if we look, and I guess in that context that the overall strategy of the company was less important to communicate down to the person on the front line, because as long as the person on the front line did the right thing, in total, the company kind of added up to meeting its strategic goals.

But in the world we live in now, which is much more complex and moving much more quickly, all of a sudden, if a task can be truly specified, it’s probably been automated. So the jobs that are left that we’re asking people to do require creativity. They require kind of judgment. They require initiative. And so now, when we think about communication, I would argue that it’s more important to have crystal clear clarity on the corporate strategy. And we frankly, for most jobs, we actually want to leave a degree of ambiguity in the specific work tests required so that people can, knowing the corporate context and the strategy and observing the kind of specific situation they’re in, apply the appropriate judgment. So all of a sudden communication has gone from, hey, let me kind of broadly, but at a kind of generic level, talk about strategy and get really specific on tasks that are really specific on corporate strategy and get a little bit blurrier on tasks to really enable people to perform at their best. And I think that’s important not only in terms of enabling people to do their best work, but communication also becomes a key point of motivation. When people understand how their work fits into the whole and how it progresses the strategy and ultimately, the success of their organization, people are typically more engaged, more motivated than simply doing something and trusting that that somehow is going to have the right output.

So again, in today’s world ensuring people have the appropriate context and can connect what they’re doing to the importance as a whole is a critical communication task that every leader needs to lead and champion.

I hope you found this helpful. Thank you very much for listening.

[To hear more of Jim’s views on culture and open leadership follow him on LinkedIn to see his video series, “An Open Conversation with Jim.”]

Thank you, Jim, for sharing such wonderful insights on the rapidly changing dynamics of what constitutes productive workplace communication.

I definitely agree that as the world we live in changes, the criteria for “optimal behavior” must also follow, and this definitely applies to communication – arguably one of the most crucial skills we can have, especially in such an interconnected world where teams often make up the fundamental systems in companies. And, as you highlighted, what it means to have “effective communication” has undoubtedly changed as well, with the emphasis shifting from clarity on specific tasks-at-hand to clarity on overarching corporate strategies or goals.

I think it is really interesting that you mentioned the impact of automation on the nature of jobs, as most remaining jobs, and likely future jobs, place much greater emphasis on creativity and judgement for each individual than in the past, when perfect execution to precise instruction was the key to success. Hence, modes of communication must adapt correspondingly as well.

I also think that the idea you mentioned that this new form of communication enables people to do their best work is really interesting, and I definitely agree. I think that with greater flexibility and autonomy, people are now better able to showcase their full potential and are encouraged to utilize their creativity to solve problems and address tasks-at-hand according to their best judgment without limitations from detailed instructions. Hence, I think this is definitely advantageous for companies when people are able to exercise their unique skill sets and backgrounds towards a common goal.