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Why Your Company's Communication is Failing - And It's Not What You Think

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Three weeks ago, I watched a $2.3 million deal walk out the door because of a single email. Not a contract dispute, not pricing issues, not even competitor interference. One bloody email that took seventeen minutes to read because it was so confusing the client thought we were taking the piss.

That's when it hit me. After nineteen years in workplace training across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, I've been looking at communication problems all wrong. We keep throwing money at presentation skills courses and email etiquette workshops when the real issue is staring us in the face like a huntsman spider on your bathroom wall at 3am.

Your communication isn't failing because your people don't know how to talk. It's failing because nobody knows what the hell they're actually supposed to communicate.

The Great Australian Communication Delusion

Here's what drives me mental: every second company I work with has spent thousands on communication training, yet their internal messaging is still more confusing than IKEA furniture instructions written in Swedish. Why? Because we've been treating symptoms instead of the disease.

The disease is assumption. Pure and simple.

I was guilty of this myself until about five years ago. Used to run these brilliant workshops on "effective workplace communication" – taught people how to structure emails, how to give feedback, how to run meetings. Felt pretty chuffed with myself too. Then I started actually listening to what was happening in these organisations between sessions.

Absolute chaos.

What's Really Happening in Your Office Right Now

Let me paint you a picture. Sarah from accounts sends an email to the marketing team asking for "the quarterly figures we discussed." Seems straightforward, right? Wrong.

Marketing thinks she means Q3 revenue projections. Finance thinks she's after Q2 actuals. IT assumes she wants the quarterly server costs. Meanwhile, Sarah actually needed the customer acquisition numbers from last quarter for a board presentation that's happening in two hours.

Sound familiar? Course it does.

Here's the kicker – Sarah could've written the most beautifully structured email in the world, complete with bullet points and clear action items, and it still would've been useless. Because the problem wasn't her communication skills. The problem was that five different people had five different interpretations of "quarterly figures we discussed."

This happens roughly 47 times per day in the average Australian office. I made that statistic up, but I bet it's not far off.

The Real Problem: Context Collapse

What we're dealing with here is what I call "context collapse." Everyone's operating with different background information, different priorities, and different definitions of basic terms. Yet we expect clear communication to happen magically.

It's like expecting someone to follow a recipe when they don't know if you're making a cake or a casserole.

I learned this the hard way during a managing difficult conversations training session I was running for a Perth mining company. Spent three hours teaching their supervisors how to have "difficult conversations" with underperforming staff. Felt brilliant about it too – lots of nodding, great questions, everyone seemed engaged.

Six months later, I get called back because nothing had improved. Turns out the supervisors were having perfectly structured difficult conversations, but they were solving the wrong problems entirely.

One bloke spent forty-five minutes coaching an employee on time management when the real issue was that the guy's equipment kept breaking down. Another supervisor had a heart-to-heart about attitude problems when the employee was actually dealing with unclear safety protocols.

Beautiful communication. Wrong context.

The Australian Way: Direct but Dense

Here's what makes this worse in Australia – we pride ourselves on being straight talkers. "Tell it like it is," we say. "No beating around the bush." Except we're often so busy being direct that we skip the essential background information.

I see this constantly in construction and mining – industries where I cut my teeth. A site manager will radio through "Fix the problem in Sector 7" and expect immediate action. Meanwhile, there are six different ongoing issues in Sector 7, and half the crew doesn't even know which area that refers to because they reorganised the site layout last month.

The irony is delicious. We think we're being efficient by cutting straight to the point, but we're actually creating more confusion than a Centrelink phone menu.

Technology Makes It Worse (Obviously)

Don't get me started on how digital communication amplifies this problem. Email removes tone, Slack removes context, and video calls remove half the participants because someone's always on mute or dealing with technical difficulties.

I was working with a Melbourne tech startup last year – proper innovative company, brilliant people, fantastic culture. But their Slack channels were like archaeological dig sites. You'd need to scroll back three days and cross-reference four different conversations to understand why someone was asking about "the Jenkins situation."

Their solution? More Slack channels. Because obviously what you need when communication is confusing is more places for it to happen.

The Solution Nobody Wants to Hear

Here's the unpopular truth: fixing communication problems requires slowing down, not speeding up. It means front-loading context instead of cutting to the chase. It means assuming people don't know what you're talking about until you're absolutely certain they do.

Australians hate this advice because it feels inefficient. We want to get to the point and move on. But spending two extra minutes providing context saves hours of confusion later.

I've started implementing what I call "context scripts" with my clients. Before any significant communication, you answer three questions:

What background information does the receiver need?
What specific outcome am I looking for?
What could be misunderstood about this message?

Sounds basic? It is. Works like a charm? Absolutely.

Real Examples from Real Companies

One Sydney accounting firm I work with was losing clients because their progress updates were incomprehensible. Emails like "We've completed the preliminary review and identified several items requiring attention before proceeding to the next phase."

What the hell does that actually mean? The client has no idea if this is good news, bad news, or just bureaucratic nonsense.

Now they write: "Good news: your books are basically in order. We found three small issues that'll take about two hours to fix, then we can finalise your tax return. You'll have it back by Friday."

Same information. Completely different impact.

Another example: a Brisbane logistics company where drivers were constantly confused about delivery priorities. Management kept sending updates like "Ensure priority items are handled appropriately." Meaningless corporate speak.

The fix? "Red labels = deliver first, everything else can wait until tomorrow." Revolutionary stuff, really.

Why Most Communication Training Misses the Mark

The training industry has got this backwards. We teach people how to communicate clearly when we should be teaching them how to think clearly about what needs to be communicated.

I'm seeing organisations spend serious money on time management training and presentation skills courses, but they won't invest thirty minutes helping their teams establish common definitions for basic terms.

It's like teaching someone to drive a Ferrari when they haven't figured out where they're trying to go.

This isn't a skills problem – it's a systems problem. Your people probably communicate just fine with their mates at the pub. The issue is that your workplace hasn't created the conditions for clear communication to happen.

The Context Audit Nobody Does

When was the last time you actually mapped out what information flows through your organisation? Not the official org chart – the real information pathways.

I guarantee you'll find processes that made sense five years ago but are now causing daily confusion. Systems that work perfectly when Sarah's in the office but fall apart when she's on leave. Procedures that assume everyone knows things that nobody actually knows.

Most companies have never done this audit because it feels like busywork. But it's the foundation of functional communication.

Moving Forward (The Boring Bit)

Look, I could give you a twelve-step process for revolutionising your workplace communication, but you wouldn't follow it anyway. Nobody does. What you can do is start with one simple change:

Next week, before sending any important communication, ask yourself: "What context am I assuming the other person has?" Then provide that context explicitly.

That's it. One change. Try it for a week and see what happens.

Your communication problems aren't about training or technology or generational differences. They're about the fundamental human tendency to assume other people know what we know.

Fix that assumption, and you'll fix 80% of your communication issues. Keep ignoring it, and you'll keep watching million-dollar deals walk out the door because of seventeen-minute emails.

The choice is yours, but choose quickly. Your competitors probably aren't reading articles like this.

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