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Interdepartmental Communication: Best Strategies and a Case Study

 Part 1

Why Interdepartmental Communication Matters

What is interdepartmental relationship?

Interdepartmental relationship is the exchange of information and collaboration between different departments within an organization. It is essential for effective communication and the successful completion of tasks. This relationship enables departments to share information, resources, and expertise in order to achieve goals and objectives that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve.

What is the importance of interdepartmental relationship?

There are two types of internal communication: intradepartmental (within the same department) and interdepartmental (between two different departments). The benefits of cultivating strong interdepartmental communication are obvious. Like the British relay race team, interdepartmental communication ensures the company as a whole is powering toward its goals.
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Good handoffs make everyone’s performance stronger, whether it’s Sales providing contest details to Customer Service weeks before launch so they can confidently answer queries, or Engineering sitting down with Marketing to ensure the new ad campaign is true to the product’s technical strengths.
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Proactive cross-departmental communication also contributes to business efficiency and customer responsiveness. If Marketing can immediately alert Legal and Customer Service to a customer complaint on social media, then the company has more time to assess the risks and respond appropriately.

What is the difference between interdepartmental and intradepartmental communication?

Interdepartmental communication is the process of exchanging information between two or more departments within an organization. This type of communication is essential for coordinating efforts and ensuring effective collaboration. On the other hand, intradepartmental communication is the exchange of information within a single department. This type of communication is important for enabling clear instructions, setting expectations, and streamlining operations. Both interdepartmental and intradepartmental communication are necessary for organizations to achieve their goals and objectives.

What is an interdepartmental team?

An interdepartmental team is a group of employees from different departments within an organization that comes together to collaborate and solve complex problems. This type of team allows for different perspectives and skills to be brought together in order to create innovative solutions and improve communication between departments.

It takes lots of practice to get interdepartmental communication right, and there’s a lot of obstacles in the way.

What are the channels of interdepartmental communication?

To ensure efficient and effective communication between departments, it is important to establish channels that allow for the exchange of information and resources. Interdepartmental communication include:
email,

  • phone calls,
  • video conferencing,
  • group chats,
  • face-to-face meetings.

The best channels of interdepartmental communication will depend on the situation and the needs of the organization.

 

 

Part 2

Interdepartmental Communication Issues

5 Roadblocks to Effective Interdepartmental Communication

What are the interdepartmental communication issues?
Here are some reasons why cross-departmental communication breaks down:

  1. The absence of an established communication framework.

    Companies are always juggling multiple balls in the air, including developing products and services, maintaining client relationships, communicating with external stakeholders, and building up intra-departmental teams. Amidst all of this chaos, it can be easy to deprioritize interdepartmental communication. That’s why many companies don’t have the proper procedures or infrastructure encouraging the flow of information between departments. This, in turn, leads to decreased interdepartmental cooperation and collaboration.

  2. Work Pressure. Most companies set team and individual KPIs.

    This means that most employees within a department (understandably) tend to turn inwards and focus on meeting these KPIs without considering their effect or relationship with the rest of the company. On top of this, technology is keeping everybody constantly ‘plugged in’ to work. The combination of these intradepartmental targets and everyone concentrating on keeping up makes it easy for people to overlook interdepartmental communication, even where it might help them achieve their goals.

  3. Personal Conflict.

    In the right (or rather, wrong) environment, politics and personal conflict can become rife within a company. In general, this breeds distrusts, hampers the flow of communication, and hobbles everyone’s performance as they try to get their work done without all the information or assistance they need. And when interdepartmental relationships break down, particularly where one or both of the employees are leaders, that attitude can trickle down to the rest of their team and compromise the company’s interdepartmental cooperation.

  4. Physical separation.

    Physical barriers to communication, such as distance, can also make interdepartmental communication more difficult. Without strong company policies and practices encouraging interdepartmental communication, departments or teams on different floors or even different buildings or countries can become ‘out of sight, out of mind’. This means employees may not even think to clarify certain issues with other departments, or at the very least hesitate or decide against getting them involved.

  5. Tribalism.

    It’s human nature to form groups and alliances with people who share your interests and preferences. It’s also human nature to look down on and distrust others who are outside that circle. In companies, this leads to teams and business units becoming siloed, decreasing interdepartmental collaboration and reducing the flow of information. It can also lead to negative stereotypes and poor interdepartmental relationships.
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    When your Sales team thinks IT Support are anti-social nerds, IT Support thinks HR is the cranky police, and HR thinks Sales are shallow people, you can guarantee that interdepartmental communication will suffer. Such a toxic environment can be devastating for a company, with individual employees too afraid or proud to reach out for help or professional development, and general mistrust and dislike impacting both employee engagement and the company’s mission.

Ironically, as a result, one of the best ways to relieve work pressure, defuse personal conflict, and break down silos and negative stereotypes is through positive interdepartmental communication. So how do we get there, and what does it look like?

 

Part 3

How to improve interdepartmental communication?

 

How do you build interdepartmental relationships?

  • Building strong relationships between departments means taking the time to invest in the relationships between departments, developing a shared understanding of the different departments’ goals and objectives and encouraging open lines of communication.
  • Creating a safe environment where employees feel comfortable discussing their work and actively engaging in conversations can help in building positive interdepartmental relationships.
  • It is important to create a culture of transparency and open communication between departments, as well as providing channels for departments to communicate with one another.
  • Departments need to develop a shared understanding of their goals and objectives in order to ensure that their efforts are aligned.
  • Utilizing tools such as internal messaging platforms, videoconferencing, and project management software can help streamline communication and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

How do you collaborate effectively with other departments?

To collaborate effectively with other departments, it is important to establish a common understanding of objectives and expectations. Regular meetings between departments can help ensure that everyone is on the same page and can provide opportunities to brainstorm ideas and develop strategies. Using a shared platform such as an online collaboration tool can facilitate communication and help ensure that everyone is informed of updates in a timely manner.

What techniques can be used to improve interdepartmental communication?

Techniques such as regular meetings, a shared intranet platform, and setting clear expectations can help foster communication between departments. Investing in team building activities and utilizing technology such as video conferencing can also help employees build relationships across departments.

4 Strategies to Strengthen Interdepartmental Communication and Collaboration

  1. Identify the information needed by other departments and design appropriate workflows:

    A good place to start is identifying what information each department has, and then the type of information each department needs to perform. Once you’ve determined this, you can provide each department with a list of information that the other departments need from them. Using this list, they can build in a daily, weekly or even monthly routine to proactively share that information. Such workflows will cut down on the need to actively request information and the lag time between the request and the information being provided, facilitating a smooth flow of communication.

  2. Encourage departments to generally share information:

    Sometimes, a department may not know what information they actually need, or another team may not realize that an employee down the hall has the perfect skillset to help them solve a particular problem. That’s why it’s also powerful to encourage your teams and departments to share general reports and information that may be relevant to other departments. This can even include sharing intradepartmental meeting summaries and making weekly status updates public across the company, rather than limited to a specific team.

  3. Document information and make it easily accessible:

    Get your teams to document and share their information broadly. This will help chronicle your company’s history and learning and provide rich data for analysis and improvement. Systematic documentation will also help your employees to draw upon past experience and research and troubleshoot faster.

  4. Encourage regular cross-departmental meetings:

    Schedule short and regular cross-departmental meetings between department heads to share updates and immediately address any issues and concerns, and encourage each department head to schedule similar meetings between their teams. This will help deepen interdepartmental relationships and increase collaboration.Of course, many people resent regular meetings that are pointless. To ensure each meeting is short and productive, make sure everyone agrees on the agenda in advance.

 

Part 4

Case Study – The Boundaryless Organization

Here’s an example of what a powerful interdepartmental meeting can look like. First, some history. In 1990, CEO Jack Welch of General Electric became convinced that globalization and technological innovation required faster decision-making, active employee engagement, and robust teamwork. He conceptualized and also advocated for a ‘boundaryless organization’, cutting red tape, and breaking down the walls between each group of employees.

The ‘GE Work-Out’ was born.

The GE Work-Out is a carefully designed, focused, multiple-day event where representatives of different departments involved in a particular project or challenge gather to analyze the matter together and develop solutions to address the tasks or problem. This process has not only helped facilitate change management within General Electric, it has been adopted by many other organizations around the world.
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By planning and also designing for interdepartmental communication, the GE Work-Out has helped organizations streamline existing processes, eliminate unnecessary tasks, identify business initiatives and empower teams. It has also helped companies to break down their silos, paving the way for more efficient and fruitful interdepartmental communication.

 

  1. Cross-train employees and managers:

    One way to help employees understand how everyone’s work is connected is to invite them to rotate or shadow other positions. Indeed, many large organizations often train their leadership team by giving them opportunities to manage other departments. Not only is this a powerful professional development and training opportunity, it helps your employees to form new friendships, identify interdepartmental collaboration opportunities, and understand the company as a whole and their role within it.

  2. Create an environment where your employees can socialize and bond with each other:

    It’s easier to work with friends when the going gets tough. Encourage fun social activities and also company culture to break down silos. Not only does this help keep your employees actively engaged, it opens up communication and strengthens interdepartmental relationships by letting people get to know each other as more than just a title or role.

 

In the 2004 Olympics, the American men’s relay team shocked the crowd for all the wrong reasons. With an average 100-meter sprint time of 9.89 seconds each, they were one of the fastest relay teams ever. Everyone thought they were a sure bet to win gold that year. But they didn’t.

The team individually were so confident in their speed that they only ever practiced handing-off the baton together twice. A fumble during the race meant that the slower British men’s team, who at that point had not won a single medal at that Olympics, pulled ahead and beat them by only one hundredth of a second. How? Teamwork.

The athletes in the British team had suffered baton fumbles before in the 1996 Olympics and 1999 World Championships. They knew that the smoothness of the handover and communication between themselves was just as important as their speed. So they’d practiced their communication and drilled the handover again and again. That’s what won them the gold. That’s what made them the better team. And that’s why interdepartmental communication matters.

We often talk about the importance of finding and nurturing the best employees and creating the strongest teams. But as the American relay race team in 2004 shows, finding the best individuals is only half the battle. The other half is developing the communication between them and also coordinating each unit into a more powerful whole. So think of the time you spend strategically strengthening your cross-departmental communication as reinforcing the seams of your company. As a result, if you do, you’ll put yourself in a better position to reach your company’s gold.

 


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