The Tips Article for today:
"A Few Minutes of Inter-department Meeting Time Will Prevent Hours and Days of Destructive Mistakes."
Most financial communications are done in the language of figures.
Figures don't lie and have no interferences from past experience and current environment! Communicating with figures is the easiest way -- it's black and white. It has its own contextual element.
But when it comes to the people who work with these figures through meetings and discussions and personal relationships, even though all of the elements of the communication process apply in the same way, communication is not as straight forward outside of the figures quoted.
In other words, if I say the bottom line figure is $953.00, that figure cannot mean anything else. However, the person delivering that figure might have meant bottom line before tax but did not mention this and everyone listening in the meeting "thought" it meant bottom line after tax. This would be a big communication problem. The figure is not wrong, but the place on the operating statement is mis-communicated.
The contextual part of communication is the same as in all other departments: to recognize the surroundings of every word spoken or financial figures quoted in order to avoid communication disasters.
The other challenge in a financial department is the communication to and from other departments. Often, outside department representatives do not understand why accounting "nags" them about precise numbers and reports, which need to be crunched daily, weekly, monthly and yearly.
Tip:
Hold regular inter-department meetings to discuss both sides of these communication needs, so that every one is aware of the vulnerabilities. Train people through examples. This will help eliminate many misunderstandings. Truly, a few minutes of meeting time will prevent hours and days of destructive mistakes.
Till next time, have a great and wonderfully successful week,
Diane
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