The Cost of Poor Communication
No one knows exactly how much poor communication costs business, industry and government
each year, but estimates suggest billions. In fact, a recent estimate claims that the cost in the
U.S. alone are close to $4 billion annually![1] Poorly-worded or inefficient emails, careless
reading or listening to instructions, documents that go unread due to poor design, hastily
presenting inaccurate information, sloppy proofreading — all of these examples result in
inevitable costs. The problem is that these costs aren’t usually included on the corporate
balance sheet at the end of each year, so often the problem remains unsolved.
You may have seen the Project Management Tree Cartoon before (Figure 1.4.1); it has been
used and adapted widely to illustrate the perils of poor communication during a project:
Figure 1.4.1 Project Management Tree Swing Cartoon. [2]
The waste caused by imprecisely worded regulations or instructions, confusing emails, long-
winded memos, ambiguously written contracts, and other examples of poor communication is
not as easily identified as the losses caused by a bridge collapse or a flood. But the losses are
just as real—in reduced productivity, inefficiency, and lost business. In more personal terms, the
losses are measured in wasted time, work, money, and ultimately, professional recognition. In
extreme cases, losses can be measured in property damage, injuries, and even deaths.
The following “case studies” show how poor communications can have real world costs and
consequences. The case studies below offer a few more examples that might be less extreme,
but much more common.
In small groups, examine each “case” and determine the following:
1. Define the rhetorical situation: Who is communicating to whom about what, how, and
why? What was the goal of the communication in each case?
2. Identify the communication error (poor task or audience analysis? Use of inappropriate
language or style? Poor organization or formatting of information? Other?)
3. Explain what costs/losses were incurred by this problem.
4. Identify possible solutions or strategies that would have prevented the problem, and
what benefits would be derived from implementing solutions or preventing the problem.
Present your findings in a brief, informal presentation to the class.
CASE 1: One garbled memo – 26 baffled phone calls
Joanne supervised 36 professionals in 6 city libraries. To cut the costs of unnecessary overtime,
she issued this one-sentence memo to her staff:
“When workloads increase to a level requiring hours in excess of an employee’s regular duty
assignment, and when such work is estimated to require a full shift of eight (8) hours or more on
two (2) or more consecutive days, even though unscheduled days intervene, an employee’s
tour of duty shall be altered so as to include the hours when such work must be done, unless an
adverse impact would result from such employee’s absence from his previously scheduled
assignment.”
After the 36 copies were sent out, Joanne’s office received 26 phone calls asking what the
memo meant. What the 10 people who didn’t call about the memo thought is uncertain. It took a
week to clarify the new policy.
CASE 2: The instruction manual the scared customers away
As one of the first to enter the field of office automation, Sagatec Software, Inc. had built a
reputation for designing high-quality and user-friendly database and accounting programs for
business and industry. When they decided to enter the word-processing market, their engineers
designed an effective, versatile, and powerful program that Sagatec felt sure would outperform
any competitor.
To be sure that their new word-processing program was accurately documented, Sagatec asked
the senior program designer to supervise writing the instruction manual. The result was a
thorough, accurate and precise description of every detail of the program’s operation.
When Sagatec began marketing its new word processor, cries for help flooded in from office
workers who were so confused by the massive manual that they couldn’t even find out how to
get started. Then several business journals reviewed the program and judged it “too
complicated” and “difficult to learn.” After an impressive start, sales of the new word processing
program plummeted.
Sagatec eventually put out a new, clearly written training guide that led new users step by step
through introductory exercises and told them how to find commands quickly. But the rewrite cost
Sagatec $350,000, a year’s lead in the market, and its reputation for producing easy-to-use
business software.
CASE 3: The promising chemist who buried his results
Bruce, a research chemist for a major petro-chemical company, wrote a dense report about
some new compounds he had synthesized in the laboratory from oil-refining by-products. The
bulk of the report consisted of tables listing their chemical and physical properties, diagrams of
their molecular structure, chemical formulas and computer printouts of toxicity tests. Buried at
the end of the report was a casual speculation that one of the compounds might be a
particularly effective insecticide.
Seven years later, the same oil company launched a major research program to find more
effective but environmentally safe insecticides. After six months of research, someone
uncovered Bruce’s report and his toxicity tests. A few hours of further testing confirmed that one
of Bruce’s compounds was the safe, economical insecticide they had been looking for.
Bruce had since left the company, because he felt that the importance of his research was not
being appreciated.
