Effective Communication Strategies

This assignment delves into the realm of effective communication strategies. It requires a comprehensive analysis of diverse communication approaches, including their strengths, weaknesses, and practical applications within organizational settings. Students are tasked with evaluating the influence of these approaches on achieving desired outcomes and identifying best practices for fostering successful communication in organizations.

MANAGING
COMMUNICATION,
KNOWLEDGE AND
INFORMATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
1.1 Range of decisions to be taken.........................................................................................1
1.2 Knowledge and information required to ensure effective decision taking.......................2
1.3 Assess the internal and external sources of information and understanding....................2
1.4 Recommendation for improvement..................................................................................3
2.1 Stakeholders for a decision making process.....................................................................3
2.2 Methods that can be used to develop the business relationship with stakeholders..........4
2.3 Plan to involve the identified people in the decision making process..............................4
2.4 Strategies for improvement..............................................................................................4
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................5
3.1, 3.2 Existing process of communication and different communication processes available
to a small voluntary organisation...........................................................................................5
3.3 Implement to ensure greater integrating of system of communication in the organisation
................................................................................................................................................6
3.4 Personal plan to improve own communication skills.......................................................7
4.1 Existing approach for collection, formatting, storage and dissemination of information and
................................................................................................................................................7
Knowledge..............................................................................................................................7
4.2 Appropriate changes to improve collection, formatting, storage and dissemination of...8
Information and Knowledge...................................................................................................8
4.3 Implement a strategy to improve access to system of information and knowledge.........8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Communication management is the process of planning, monitoring, reviewing and
implementing all the channels that are operated within and outside the organisation. In others
words, it can be said as a two way process through which company not only be able to create
mutual understanding among the employees in order to share information and ideas but also help
the company to create and share meaning of information and idea generated (Brandes and Darai,
2014). In this report, different ranges of decisions are analyses in order to examine the
information and knowledge that is required by an organisation to take effective decisions. In
addition to this, stakeholders are identified who are required to implement the decision making
process. Besides this, report has been prepared on the existing process of organisation in order to
bring improvement in the integration of communication system. At last, appropriate changes
which company should consider with an aim to improve the collection, formatting and
dissemination of the information and knowledge collected have been presented.
TASK 1
1.1 Range of decisions to be taken
Decision making is the procedure of selecting the one best alternative from various
options by planning and organizing all the activities in order to achieve the desired objective.
Some of the decisions that need to be taken at different levels are as follows:
Strategic: - The individual present at this level are highly responsible for achieving the
desired objectives of organisation. In order to take various decisions for achieving the desired
organisational goals, individual are required to invest large sum of money. Employees at this
level are required to take various decisions related to investment and development of the
company (Coombs, 2014).
Tactical:- This is the second level of the organisational hierarchy where an individual
makes efforts to implement the strategic decisions by developing different types of plans,
structure, distribution channels, workflows and allocate the available resources properly. And
most importantly, they take care of the allocation of funds in each and every section so that
condition of deficit and surplus does not occur.
Operational level: - This is the last level of hierarchy. Person available at this level is
responsible for making day-to-day decisions. These are based on the general facts and extra
business opinions required.
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Therefore, all the three levels are interrelated with each other in order to take various
necessary decisions for the betterment of the society.
1.2 Knowledge and information required to ensure effective decision taking
In order to ensure effective decision taking, organisation is required to take into
consideration the following information. Complete knowledge about these factors will help the
company to move towards high growth rate:
Firstly, company should make efforts to collect up to date information on regular basis
because of constantly changing market position. Even a single change can create a huge impact
on the functioning of the company (Cornelissen, 2014).
Secondly, an organisation should try to collect information about the market and
customers in order to identify their requirements. Offering what they want will assist the
company to increase profit and to take various important decisions.
Thirdly, Company should make an attempt to collect as much information as they can
about their competitors. The information collected will prove to be very beneficial for the
company. The information collected will help the company to beat its competitors more easily by
serving much better things as compared to its rival.
1.3 Assess the internal and external sources of information and understanding
Different internal and external sources of information and understanding required by a
retail firm are as follows:-
Internal sources
Financial: - Finance controller within an organisation is responsible for managing all the
activities related to the finance, cost and profit. The individual present at this level are
responsible for examining that no condition for shortfall occurred.
Marketing: - This is one of the important departments working for the development of the
company. If marketing of the product in retail industry is not done properly, then an organisation
cannot flourish. By undertaking sales promotion methods, company will be able to know the
likes and dislikes of the potential customers (Dow, 2014). This in turn will help the firm to
promote and improve the sales of its products.
External sources
Government: - This is the legal authority that provides information to the organisation on
various business dealing.
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Database and research: - By conducting research, company will be able to be collect
various information about the changing fashion and trends that take place within market. In
addition to this, it also helps the company to find out different technologies in order to bring
innovation in the products.
1.4 Recommendation for improvement
Some of the suggestions to improve decision making process of the organisation are as
follows:-
 For improving decision making process, Company should conduct a research in the
market in order to know about the wants and requirement of the customers. In addition to
this, company will also be able to bring new and innovative technology in existence.
 They should form various strategies by collecting information about the competitors. This
in turn will help the company to introduce better products in the market against its
competitors (Forsgren and Johanson, 2014).
 An organisation should also start planning all its financial activities in advance. In respect
to which company will be able to manage the flow of funds from within and outside the
organisation. Balancing between funds will help the enterprise to overcome the condition
of surplus and deficits.
2.1 Stakeholders for a decision making process
Manager: - They are the one who work for the betterment of the company. They develop
various strategies in order to beat the competitors and achieve organisation’s objective.
Owner: - They are the one who invest their saving in order to set up a new business. They
decides where to start up a business, in which region or country, types of business which they are
going to start and way in which they will operate business (like online business or a general
business).
Authority: - They affect the working and functioning of organisation by introducing
various policies and norms. Considering all the norms and regulation imposed by the government
will help the company to take various decisions regarding the start-up and operating of the
business (Miller, 2014).
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2.2 Methods that can be used to develop the business relationship with stakeholders
Methods that can be used by an organisation in order to develop good business
relationship with the shareholders and are stated as follows:-
 Training and development method: - By conducting various training sections, an
organisation will be able to enhance the knowledge of each and every individual working
within an organisation. This in turn will increase the productivity and profitability of the
enterprise.
Company should also try to motivate the employees by satisfying their needs and wants.
Company should make efforts to provide everything what they want. Generally, investors,
manager and owner want high rate of profitability. By providing healthy working environment,
organisation will also be able to enhance the productivity of individual and will reduce the rate of
absentees and turnover (Russ and et.al, 2013).
Therefore, by using all these methods, company should be able to satisfy the
stakeholders. Highly satisfying stakeholders create a healthy business relationship. This in turn
will assist the company to increase the productivity of the employees by enhancing knowledge.
2.3 Plan to involve the identified people in the decision making process
First of all, a proper planning should be done about the message which company is
required to send to its stakeholders. After that company selects the best method through which
can they can communicate to the stakeholders within a short period of time. Thus, if company
wants to call its shareholders, then they should give ad in a newspaper or can call each
shareholder (Shortliffe and Barnett, 2014). Similarly, if they want to send message to the
employees, they can organise a conference or can send them a draft or email. Likewise in order
to talk to manager, company can send draft or memo. After this, company should tell all the
stakeholders about the information which they want to give to them. Then at last, they should
take feedback from the receiver in order to find out whether the correct message has been
received by the receiver or not.
2.4 Strategies for improvement
There are various types of strategies that can be used by an organisation in order to
improve the decision making process:-
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Analyses the points which are creating difficulties: - An organisation should prepare a list
of things that are going to affect their decision. Once, if a company is able to identify the
problem then they can easily found the solutions for the same.
Develop strategies that are going to help the company: - Once the problem is identified
then company should prepare strategies to overcome the factors that are affecting the decision
making process.
Strategies should be prepared by considering the various alternatives: - Company should
develop various strategies for improvement by considering various alternatives (Shortliffe and
Barnett, 2014). If any one alternative selected may not prove to be beneficial, then in that case,
company can switch over to another one.
Examine the pros and cons: - Company should examine the pros and cons of each and
every option selected. This in turn will help the organisation to finalize the one best that will help
the company to improve its decision making process.
Review the strategies: - An organisation should continue collecting all the information
even after the suitable decision has been made.
Thus, these are some of the strategies which can be used by the organisation in order to
start up a new business in retail sector by operating its business through bricks and mortar way or
in form of online business.
TASK 2
3.1, 3.2 Existing process of communication and different communication processes available to a
small voluntary organisation
According to the above case study, it can be found out that existing process of
communication of the organisation is not good. It has been found out that by using this
interaction process, volunteer supervisor is not able to complete the project on time. And even
after a thorough analysis of the interview process, volunteer supervisor is not able to match the
skills that are required in order to overcome the problem for many months. Thus, lack of
communication creates a huge problem for the company. They were only able to supervise the
special projects by using horizontal top down communication method.
Different types of communication process available to the small voluntary organisation
are described below:-
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Synchronous Communication: - This type of communication takes place when all the
parties communicate to each other at the same time. This type of communication takes place
through telephone and video conferencing. This type of communication takes place when an
organisation want to conduct the live meeting, audio and video conference, instant messaging,
computer assisted conference or conference call (Ting-Toomey and Chung, 2012). Through this
type of communication, one can talk to another even sitting at different countries.
Asynchronous Communication: - these types of communication take place at the small
level. In this type of communication, only limited number of people come together to talk,
because talking to large mass of people in different countries at the same time may create
complex condition. This type of communication takes place through fax, emails, really simple
Syndication etc.
In order to improve the communication process, the voluntary organisation should
consider the following factors into consideration:
 The message given should be simple, easy, precise and easy to understand. This in turn
will help the company to avoid confusion.
 The communication channel should be appropriate according to the information which
needs to be said. Selection of wrong channel may delay the delivery of necessary
information.
 Always try to take feedback at the end of the communication process in order to ensure
whether the proper message has been received by the end user or not.
3.3 Implement to ensure greater integrating of system of communication in the organisation
Synchronous Communication takes place in order to contact large number of individual
sitting at different places within a short period of time whereas on the other hand Asynchronous
communication takes place in order to contact group of people.
Voluntary organisation can improve communication by using appropriate channels of
communication and sending the message to the person in easy and simple language so that no
confusion is created and information can be send to a large number of people within a short
period of time. Besides this, if voluntary supervisor have selected the proper communication
method then there might be able to achieve the desired organisational goals (Ovine and et.al,
2015). Thus, in order to ensure the integration of system, the sender of the message should take
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feedback from the receiver at the end of communication in order to ensure whether the correct
message deliver to the receiver or not.
3.4 Personal plan to improve own communication skills
If I have opportunity to work as volunteer supervisor, then I will improve my own
communication skills through getting knowledge about innovative technologies. It can be done
by taking part in training and development programs and attending workshops. Moreover, proper
documentation of all the functions will help to improve written communications skills. Another,
group discussion, organizing seminars and participating in personality development program will
provide assistance to improve group communication skills (Berger, 2015). In addition to it, it
may be needed for volunteer supervisor to handle number of queries of large group of people at
the same time. Thus, it is necessary to improve public communication skills. It can be done by
conducting seminars and events. Continuous communication, tailoring messages with the
volunteers and resolve volunteer difficulties will be able to develop professional communication
skills to a great extent (Coombs, 2014).
4.1 Existing approach for collection, formatting, storage and dissemination of information and
Knowledge
Presented scenario indicated that organization is using traditional approach for collecting,
formatting, storage and dissemination of required information and knowledge. They are
following top down communication approach in which information can be communicated
through using hierarchical structure. Higher authority officials transfer information to employees
through using managerial structure (Smith, 2014). As per the scenario, Volunteer supervisor is
not able to deliver timely information to the workers. The reason behind this is that she has been
engaged in so many projects and was overloaded with their work and face difficulties. On the
other hand, volunteers suffered many working difficulties because of lack of proper guidance.
The flow of information is not free in the organization. Moreover, it is a time consuming
communication approach therefore; work has not been completed within allotted time slots. This
in turn, volunteer supervisor was unable to establish efficient project management and facing
number of difficulties for collection, formatting, data storage and dissemination of information.
Thus, it became necessary to adopt new approach so that flow of information can be relaxed.
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4.2 Appropriate changes to improve collection, formatting, storage and dissemination of
Information and Knowledge
Various approaches are available to organization for improving information gathering
procedure, formatting, storing data and dissemination of necessary information and knowledge.
Firm has to adopt various tools and techniques such as observation, experiment, surveys,
estimation, publications and governmental reports to gather required information (Arnold and
Boggs, 2015). It assists volunteer supervisor to collect both primary and secondary information
as well. Moreover, volunteer supervisor has to check the accuracy of collected data that helps in
their project management process. Thereafter, volunteer supervisor has to convert gathered raw
data into meaningful information through using various software tools such as SPSS (Hybels,
2014). Along with this, she has to ensure proper data storage so that organization will be able to
use this information at the time of need. In the present age, technology is changing at a rapid rate
which provides assistance to the firms to collect large quantity of data at a single place with
proper security. For instance, DBMS, ERP software and MS Excel are the tools that assist in
storing large amount of information. On the other hand, dissemination for awareness and
understanding are the plans to aware volunteers about their allotted tasks (Approaches to the
collection, formatting, storage and dissemination of information and knowledge, n.d.). However,
dissemination for action is a changing perspective resulted from the adoption of new approaches.
It implies that volunteers will be well equipped with required skills, knowledge and
understanding about their work to bring any change.
4.3 Implement a strategy to improve access to system of information and knowledge
Numerous tools are available to the firm for improving access to information and
knowledge. In present age, Weblog, E-mails, wireless network and online conferences are some
significant tools that assist firms to share information and knowledge with the internal and
external persons. Through using weblog, volunteer supervisor can post any kind of information
and share with the others (Dima, Teodorescu and Gifu, 2014). Moreover, E-mail is a quicker
way to communicate with the employees. It will assist volunteer supervisor to handle their
difficulties and improve their performance. Along with this, online conferences such as Skype
and wireless network provide huge assistance to share information within few seconds. In
addition to it, open knowledge Management system helps volunteers to access information about
their work and removes their working difficulties.
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CONCLUSION
From the following report, it can be concluded that proper communication within an
organisation will help the company to achieve its desired target easily. If communication skills
and method selected for communication is not correct then it may create many problems for the
company. They should ensure that the message send is simple, easy and is easy to understand. In
addition to this, they should select the appropriate channel of distribution and along with this,
they should collect feedback from the end receiver.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Arnold, E. C. and Boggs, K. U., 2015. Interpersonal relationships: Professional communication
skills for nurses. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Berger, A. A., 2015. Media and communication research methods: An introduction to
qualitative and quantitative approaches. Sage Publications.
Brandes, L. and Darai, D., 2014. The value of top-down communication for organizational
performance. Working Paper Series, University of Zurich, Department of Economics.
Coombs, W. T., 2014. Ongoing Crisis Communication: Planning, Managing, and Responding:
Planning, Managing, and Responding. Sage Publications.
Cornelissen, J., 2014. Corporate communication: A guide to theory and practice. Sage.
Dima, I. C., Teodorescu, M. and Gifu, D., 2014. New communication approaches vs. traditional
communication. International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences. 20. pp. 46-55.
Dow, B.J., 2014. The Lessons of History: Women's Studies in Communication Approaches 40.
Women's Studies in Communication. 37(3). pp. 259-261.
Forsgren, M. and Johanson, J., 2014. Managing networks in international business. Routledge.
Hybels, S., 2014. Communicating effectively. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Miller, K., 2014. Organizational communication: Approaches and processes. Nelson Education.
Russ, S., Rout, S., Sevdalis, N., Moorthy, K., Darzi, A. and Vincent, C., 2013. Do safety
checklists improve teamwork and communication in the operating room? A systematic
review. Annals of surgery. 258(6) pp. 856-871.
Shortliffe, E. H. and Barnett, G. O., 2014. Biomedical data: Their acquisition, storage, and use.
In Biomedical informatics. Springer London. pp. 39-66.
Stacks, D. W. and Salwen, M. B., 2014. An integrated approach to communication theory and
research. Routledge.
Ting-Toomey, S. and Chung, L.C., 2012. Understanding intercultural communication. New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Voinea, D. V. and et.al., 2015. Embarrassments in managerial communication. Polish Journal of
Management Studies. 11(2).
Online
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Smith, A. M., 2014. Managing Communication Knowledge and Information. [PDF]. Available
through: <http://www.slideshare.net/MichaelSmith210/managing-communications-
knowledge-and-information-section-1-to-4>. [Accessed on 24th February, 2016].
Approaches to the collection, formatting, storage and dissemination of information and
knowledge. n.d. [PDF]. Available through:
<http://michellebranchcolbournecollege.weebly.com/uploads/2/3/6/7/23679890/
unit_16_l5_lo4.pdf>. [Accessed on 24th February, 2016].
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