Enhancing Communication to Find a Solution to an Organisational Problem

Effective communication is the cornerstone of any successful organisation (Getchell, 2022). It plays a pivotal role in identifying and addressing organisational problems and ultimately finding viable solutions. This essay will explore the significance of communication in solving an organisational problem and propose strategies to enhance it.

Background to the problem: In September 2021, the Federal Parliament of Australia increased the minimum membership requirements for political party registration from 500 members to 1,500 members (Head, 2022). This meant that from December 2021, political parties that were not represented in Parliament would be required to have a minimum membership of 1,500 members, or they would be deregistered, and could not contest federal elections as a party.

At the time, the author of this paper was on the National Executive of a political party (The Party) which had a membership of only 700 members. The author had been on the National Executive for three years. This party had a 44 year history, and had previously had 11 senators in the parliament, holding absolute balance of power in the Senate. The Party now needed to increase membership by 800 in three months to remain registered and be able to contest the May 2022 federal election.

Identifying the problem: Since 2007, membership of almost all long-established political parties has been declining (Head, 2022). The Party’s membership had decreased from over 15,000 in 2001 to just 700 in 2021. They were faced with the daunting task of more than doubling membership in just three months in order to remain registered. Discussion amongst National Executive members and the various work teams in the party had not produced any ideas for a solution.

Analysing the problem: It was clear that communication was the problem in identifying the solution (Pereira, Santos, Sempiterno, da Costa, Dias, & dos Santos António, 2021). Effective communication is essential for recognising and defining business problems. Team members must communicate clearly to understand the nature and scope of the issue. Inadequate communication can result in misdiagnosis, leading to ineffective solutions.

In this particular case, information overload was the major problem (Edmunds & Morris, 2000). The president of the party had invited over 50 people to become part of a team to address the problem, being the eleven members of the national Executive and every leader of every work and policy team in the organisation. Each person had their own solution to the problem, and there was no attempt at moderating discussion. The result was that over 50 people believed their idea was the best one, and none were willing to change from their viewpoint.

To compound the problem, most of the members of this very large group did not have business or management backgrounds, and had never participated in team problem solving activities before. Attempts to steer the team through the problem-solving phases broke down (Wiltshire, Butner & Fiore, 2018). Additionally, “sender’s bias” seemed to be an issue, in that the president of The Party was not able to adequately communicate what was required, and was not prepared to listen to any solutions other than her own (Shimizu, 2017).

Developing a solution: To address this problem, several members of the larger group, with business backgrounds, met informally to discuss a plan of action. This informal group did not have a leader as such (Wellman, Newton, Wang, Wei, Waldman & LePine, 2019), and was very laissez-faire. They decided that the best solution was to dissolve the larger team and implement a smaller new team consisting of just five people. From their experiences, smaller teams of practiced professionals achieved better results in developing rapid solutions (Hoegl, 2005).

The smaller team decided to put forward to the larger team that the larger team should be dissolved, citing the difficulties this larger team was having in reaching consensus on a solution. The smaller team also recognised that they needed to put forward a solution to the problem, as the larger team would not just accept a smaller team if the smaller team did not have a vision (Hoegl, 2005).

The solution the smaller team identified was increased spending on social media advertising. We believed that social media advertising had the potential to reach large numbers of people in a very short time (Voorveld, van Noort, Muntinga & Bronner, 2018).

The smaller team also felt that most in the larger group would recognise that social media advertising was a realistic solution, and that most would also acknowledge that the intricacies of this strategy was outside their comfort zone. For this reason, it was felt that the larger team members could accept not being part of a smaller social media work group and would be happy to dissolve the larger team.

However, the smaller team were also careful not to frame the social media advertising idea in a way so as to suggest to the larger team that they did not have any input into the idea. It was presented to the larger group as one of several solutions, and other members of the smaller group pushed the benefits of the social media advertising idea. By carefully presenting the idea in this way, the smaller group were able to get the larger group to accept social media advertising as a solution the entire group had devised, so everybody felt they had input into it (Cole, Bedeian & Bruch, 2011).

Preparing an implementation plan: The next step was to form a social media advertising team for this specific project. It was suggested to the larger group, and agreed upon, that the Social Media Advertising Team should consist of members from several of the existing work and policy teams, as well as a National Executive member (Tarakci, Ates, Porck, van Knippenberg, Groenen & de Haas, 2014). It was also decided that the budget for this project should be $25,000.

Because the expenditure was significant, the author, as Treasurer of The Party and a member of the National Executive, was nominated as and accepted the role of team leader. The Party also recruited the leader of the communications team, the leader of the membership team, the leader of the social media team and the leader of the fundraising team. It was felt that these team members could, in turn, utilise their teams to support the newly formed social media advertising team (Tarakci, Ates, Porck, van Knippenberg, Groenen & de Haas, 2014).

The new team met for the first time the same day, given that they only had three weeks to recruit 800 new members, more than doubling the size of The Party. After some initial discussion and disagreement, it was decided to utilise the services of a professional social media advertising firm. It was accepted that outsourcing the project to professionals in the field would maximise results and minimise risks (Zhang, Liu, Tan, Jiang & Zhu, 2018). The leader of the existing social media team initially insisted that she could run the campaign herself, but could not put forward a plan as to how she would do this.

It was agreed by all team members that the Treasurer of The Party, as leader of the team and the person with the most business experience, should get three quotes from three different organisations. It was further agreed that the team should then have meetings with each of these three organisations and select one to run the campaign (Zhang, Liu, Tan, Jiang & Zhu, 2018). A timeline of three days to get the quotes was set, and a further two days to choose one of those quotes. This would leave just two weeks to recruit 800 new members.

The Party’s Treasurer compiled a list of ten organisations that he felt were suitable and contacted each of them directly by phone and later email the requirements of the project through to the organisations. As it worked out, only three organisations felt they could achieve the goal of 800 new members in the short time frame that existed (two weeks).

The Treasurer and two other members of the work team interviewed these organisations, reviewed their strategy plans, and chose one. We chose questions carefully based on costs, services available, potential service quality and previous results of similar campaigns (Edvardsson, Durst & Oskarsson, 2020).

Predicting the possible outcomes: The marketing organisation that was chosen put forward a strategy suggesting that The Party should utilise only Facebook advertising, as their experience was that this had the best results from all the social media platforms they had used for similar projects in the past. The Party’s work team decided to go with this strategy, given that they felt Facebook’s utilisation of artificial intelligence to target specific demographic groups aligned with brand communication principles we agreed with (Klepek, 2020). The initial prediction of the advertising agency was that a budget of $15,000 would recruit the number of members required.

The social media advertising team submitted a spreadsheet list of current and previous members, totalling about 45,000. Facebook’s algorithm matched the email addresses with existing Facebook accounts, then selected the most common demographics from these existing accounts. The advertising then targeted other accounts not on our list who had similar demographics and lived in Australia.

Evaluating the strategy: The social media advertising team determined that, given the short timeframe that existed, they needed to monitor the results on a daily basis. Over the first week, the campaign only recruited about 40 members. It was decided amongst the team that a new category of membership be created, being a supporter member, and that this category would be free of membership fees. It was felt that this would motivate low-income members of the public into joining (Paswan & Troy, 2004).

Subsequent monitoring over the final week of the campaign showed that between 100-300 new supporter members joined The Party each day over a period of seven days. The team attributed this to free memberships. At the end of the second week of the advertising campaign, The Party had almost 2,000 members, an increase of 1,300 over the three weeks since deciding on the strategy needed for the membership drive.

In the evaluation stage, the social media advertising team identified the following as significant factors in the campaign, from the time of the AEC announcement to reaching almost 2000 members – a period of three months:

1. Active Listening: This was not encouraged amongst team members in the initial larger group of about 50 people. Active listening involves not just hearing but understanding and empathising with the speaker’s perspective. It fosters a culture of open dialogue where problems can be discussed openly (Jonsdottir & Fridriksdottir, 2020). This failure was probably due to the size of the original group, but the team found active listening was an important contribution to the success of the smaller group of five people.
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2. Clarity and Precision: Communication should be clear, concise, and to the point (Gulbrandsen, 2019). Jargon and ambiguity should be avoided, as they can lead to misunderstandings. Simple language should be used to convey complex ideas. The President of The Party failed to achieve this in the larger group, but it was achieved in the smaller group.
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3. Utilising Technology: Communication tools and technologies were used to facilitate remote collaboration, which was especially necessary considering members of the larger team were in every state and territory of Australia (Wright, et al, 2014). Video conferences, project management software, and instant messaging apps were used in the hopes of improving communication efficiency. However, in the larger group, these proved inadequate, while in the smaller group, they proved extremely beneficial. The limitations of video-conferencing and time delays with emails with the larger group were especially problematic.
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4. Feedback Mechanisms: Establishing feedback channels to encourage team members to express their thoughts, concerns, and suggestions is vital (Kim & Kim, 2020). Constructive feedback helps in refining solutions and addressing potential roadblocks. However, the team found feedback mechanisms in the larger group almost impossible, and time-consuming, given that the group were dispersed across the country. In the smaller group, feedback was not so much of a problem.
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5. Effective Documentation: Documenting discussions, decisions, and action plans is essential (Prys & Różewski, 2022). This serves as a reference point and helps ensure everyone is on the same page throughout the problem-solving process. The team found that in the larger group meetings, effective documentation was not possible, but in the smaller group meeting, documentation was precise and concise.
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6. Training and Development: Investing in communication skills training for employees at all levels is essential (Sasaki, et al, 2017). Effective communication is a skill that can be cultivated and improved over time. There was not time to develop these skills among the larger group, and even after the membership target was achieved, the majority of the group felt that such training was a waste of their time. Changing these attitudes will take considerable time.
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7. Cross-Functional Teams: Assembling a cross-functional team with diverse skill sets and perspectives seemed crucial for this project (Ambrose, Matthews & Rutherford, 2018). This diversity can lead to more comprehensive problem-solving approaches but requires robust communication to function effectively. In the larger group, there were too many teams represented, most of which were not involved with membership growth. They were specialists in policy development. In the smaller group, who chose representatives only from the work teams that were directly involved in membership growth, communication was better and results were achieved.

Recommendations: In the case just discussed, it was clear that communication is more effective in smaller groups than in larger groups. The social media advertising team prepared a report to the National Executive recommending that team sizes be limited to a maximum of ten team members in the future. The National Executive accepted this recommendation, and it was implemented into official policy.

The social media advertising team also recommended that all team members in the future undergo compulsory communication training as a condition of being appointed to a team. All existing team members of all teams would also be required to undergo communications training as a condition of staying on the teams they were a part of. The National Executive accepted this submission, and it became a party policy.

Conclusion: Effective communication is the corner stone of solving business problems and implementing successful solutions. It is a multifaceted process that involves listening, speaking, documenting, and fostering collaboration. By prioritising clear and efficient communication, businesses can address challenges more effectively, make informed decisions, and ultimately achieve their goals. In an increasingly interconnected and dynamic business environment, mastering the art of communication is not just a choice but a necessity.

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