Communications management is the systematic planning, implementing, monitoring, and revision of all the channels of communication within an organization, and between organizations; it also includes the organization and dissemination of new communication directives connected with an organization, network, or communications technology. Aspects of communications management include developing corporate communication strategies, designing internal and external communications directives, and managing the flow of information, including online communication. New technology forces constant innovation on the part of communications managers. A plan is a proposed or intended method of getting from one set of circumstances to another. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... An organization or organisation (read more about -ize vs -ise) is a formal group of people with one or more shared goals. ... An organization or organisation (read more about -ize vs -ise) is a formal group of people with one or more shared goals. ... // Look up network in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Communication is the process of sending information to oneself or another entity, usually via a language. ... A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, as differentiated from tactics or immediate actions with resources at hand. ... In discourse-based grammatical theory, information flow is any tracking of referential information by speakers. ... The Internet is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). ...

Introduction

Effective organizational communications are an essential precondition of effective management -- without effective communication, management becomes difficult or impossible. Organizations with more than one level of management suffer from communications problems that can interfere with almost any aspect of the organization, including corrective actions. Organizational communication is the study of the following: how people communicate within an organizational context, or the influence of, or interaction with organizational structures in communicating/organizing. ... The term management characterizes the process of and/or the personnel leading and directing all or part of an organization (often a business) through the deployment and manipulation of resources (human, financial, material, intellectual or intangible). ...

The purpose of communications management is to ensure that both managers and workers have access to the same information. Theoretically, all parties will be able to agree on the tasks to improve the organization, and everyone will work together in a more coordinated fashion; in practice, the same incentives must apply to both managers and workers, or else groups with differing incentives will develop different goals, negating the effect of the shared information. Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. ... Information as a concept bears a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. ... The word theory has a number of distinct meanings in different fields of knowledge, depending on their methodologies and the context of discussion. ... A practice refers to a way that something is done. ... In economics, an incentive in anything that provides a motive for a particular course of action — that counts as a reason for preferring one choice to the alternatives. ...

One of the simplest and most practical communications management methods is a straightforward, hierarchical, bidirectional communication method, with clear incentives. For the various types of hierarchy, see hierarchy (disambiguation) A hierarchy (in Greek: , it is derived from -hieros, sacred, and -arkho, rule) is a system of ranking and organizing things or people, where each element of the system (except for the top element) is subordinate to a single other element. ... The term bidirectional can refer to: Bidirectional script support Duplex This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Roles of communications managers

Communications managers:

• Design of organizational communications structures
• Define communications principles and standards
• Formulate the communications goals of the organization
• Manage and monitor information flows
• Organize crisis communications
• Implement communications strategies
• Research the communications context
• Resonance analysis of team networks
• Organize communications training for staff
• Provide corporate presentations to publics, media and cybernetic space

Crisis management involves identifying a crisis, planning a response to the crisis and confronting and resolving the crisis. ...

The weekly reporting method

One simple and popular communications method is called the weekly reporting method: every employee composes an e-mail report, once a week, including information on their activities in the preceding week, their plans for the following week, and any other information deemed relevant to the larger group, bearing in mind length considerations. Reports are sent to managers, who summarize and report to their own managers, eventually leading to an overall summary led by the CEO, which is then sent to the board of directors. The CEO then sends the board's summary back down the ladder, where each manager can append an additional summary or note before referring it to their employees. Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... A chief executive officer (CEO), or chief executive, is the highest-ranking corporate officer or executive officer of a corporation, or agency. ... In relation to a company, a director is an officer of the company charged with the conduct and management of the affairs of the company. ...

Eventually, each employee will receive a long e-mail, containing many or all of the above-mentioned summaries, from every level of management; reading the full result is rarely a requirement. Curious or ambitious employees are considered more likely to read the result; task-centered employees, however, are not.

Examples of the weekly reporting method

At Printronix (NASDAQ PTNX)^{[citation needed]}, a $100 manufacturing organization with five levels of management, this was applied starting in 1990. Within a week, the perennial grumbles about "bad communication" ceased. By 1994 the organization had reduced total floorspace by 40% (eventually 75%), had "found" $100m of cash, reduced backlog from 3 months to 3.5 weeks, reduced product development time (for computer printers, a complex product) from three years to six months, and doubled product service life (greatly reducing the total cost of ownership of their product). This was achieved by a series of employee-initated, management-led activities: adoption of just-in-time manufacturing, statistical process control, corrections of product weaknesses, and a cross-product "printer architecture" permitting development of "design modules" that could be mixed and matched for niche markets. This article is about the year. ... 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Service life refers to the expected lifetime of a product. ... It has been suggested that Life cycle cost analysis be merged into this article or section. ... Statistical process control (SPC) is a method for achieving quality control in manufacturing processes. ...

All of the programs arose via the reporting structure, making them visible to upper management, who were then free to support proposals they felt made sense.

Another cross-hierarchical system with similar traits arose at Warburg's Bank. According to Jacques Attali's biography, Warburg used a sheet of one-to-four-line summaries of each possible new loan, on a few sheets that were copied through the entire bank each day. It spanned the entire hierarchy, and anyone with comments was asked to bring them. Warburg's grew from 16,000 pounds, to 4 billion pounds under management in less than forty years. Jacques Attali (born 1943) is a French economist and scholar. ...

See also

• communication planning

Communication planning is figuring out how to communicate important messages to key stakeholders of an organization in the most effective way possible. ...

External sources

• Storytelling to Manage Change
• Communication Methods
• International Association of Business Communicators -- www.IABC.com. Global professional organization for communication professionals working in a variety of fields. The group's 14,000 members are invited to attend monthly professional development seminars and network through their local IABC chapters.
• Capture. Deliver. Excel. - Applying the principles of business Writing to communicate around change, strategy and leadership
• Publications Management Leading trade publication and research provider for the custom media industry; covers employee publications and communications.
• Magnum Opus Awards Professional awards program recognizing the top custom publishing efforts in the world, including publications targeting employees and internal stakeholders.