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The Communication Issues Within Our Organization

Decent Essays

As we continue to learn more about the communication issues within our organization, I believe it’s time to focus on adapting our communication strategy to our specific audiences. The primary focus of our department is to ensure that communication occurs effectively, and that cannot occur unless we fully understand our audiences. To do this, we will conduct audience analysis across the organization, our customers, and our business associates. Wrench, Goding, Johnson, & Attias (2011) defined audience analysis as “the process of gathering information about the people in your audience so that you can understand their needs, expectations, beliefs, values, attitudes, and likely opinions.” Understanding these important factors will be the …show more content…

department or area of specialization)
• Technical knowledge
• Geographic location, language, and culture
• Familiarity with consumer media channels (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Demographics that may impact the reception of the information (gender, age, education, etc.)
The factors above reference considerations that might impact the reception of our communication. The biggest difference impacting the delivery of our messages will be group membership. Defining group membership will break our audiences down into three areas:
• Employees o High technical knowledge (R&D, Tech Support) o Mid-level technical knowledge (Manufacturing, Sales and Marketing) o Limited technical knowledge (HR, Finance/Accounting)
• Partners (vendors, suppliers, subcontractors, merchants, etc.)
• Customers (individuals and corporate accounts)
There are many tools and methods that can be used, but the goal is to collect information on our audiences as effectively and as efficiently as possible. The list of tools and methods below is based on the work of Wrench et al. (2011) and is listed in descending order of effectiveness based on the “Media Richness Theory” (Daft & Lengel, 1986). This theory differentiates effective communication on a scale from most effective to least effective, based on inter-personal contact with the audience.
• Interviews – These are the most personal way of collecting information on the audience member, but are also the most invasive and time consuming. This method

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