Stay Plugged In to Information Sharing

I got this in an email the other day:

In a hospital's Intensive Care Unit, patients always died in the same bed, on Sunday morning, at about 11:00 a.m., regardless of their medical condition. This puzzled the doctors and some even thought it had something to do with the supernatural.

No one could solve the mystery as to why the deaths occurred around 11:00 a.m. Sunday, so a worldwide team of experts was assembled to investigate the cause of the incidents.

The next Sunday morning, a few minutes before 11:00 a.m. all of the doctors and nurses nervously waited outside the ward to see for themselves what the terrible phenomenon was all about. Some were holding wooden crosses, prayer books, and other holy objects to ward off the evil spirits. Just when the clock struck 11:00, Alice Stewart, the part-time Sunday sweeper, entered the ward and unplugged the life support system so he could use the vacuum cleaner.

I don’t know if that’s a true story, and while it’s tragic if it is true, it’s funny too. It’s also unfortunate, because with a better communications infrastructure the hospital could have uncovered the source of this phenomenon much sooner. This is the value of an open communication organization – people know what’s going on, make suggestions for improvement, and share information. And Alice finds out what that plug powers.

In an open-communication organization, messages aren’t pushed down, they’re shared in conversation at every level – back and forth, up and down. So not only are the bigwigs (and the worldwide team of experts) in the know, so are the part-time Sunday sweepers.

Have you ever heard something for the first time and thought, “How come I’m just now hearing about that?” Sometimes it’s a new procedure, or a new policy or perk that’s been in place for a while but nobody took the time, or thought it was important enough, to make sure the message got delivered throughout the company. Companies with a robust internal communications infrastructure are fortunate that they have tools in place to share information with coworkers. Good internal communication doesn’t go through a funnel – it flows freely.

Don’t hoard information. Next thing you know, you’ll have a TV show on A&E, and everyone will think it’s creepy. But really, it makes no more sense to keep information to yourself than it does for the Hoarders to keep all that weird stuff they keep.

Know something? Tell everyone you come in contact with!