Communication is a funny thing. We talk and listen, write emails, text, video conference, SnapChat, etc. all the time. And yet ... how many of us really feel like we are understood or that actual communication of any substance has happened? How many of us have attended a meeting only to leave the meeting wondering why the meeting was called in the first place? What outcome was desired from the meeting by the organizers? Any discussion about organizational risk management must include a section about organizational communication. After all:

• Who will be implementing the risk policies and procedures? The employees.
• Who needs to learn about organizational risk policies and procedures? The employees.
• Who is most likely to see a symptom of a larger looming problem early in its development? The employees.
• Who will help the governance committee better understand the realities of uncovering and addressing operational risk related issues? The employees.

In short, any effectively run organization must have an effective communication structure or its key leadership, operational and risk management functions will be seriously hampered. I attended a lecture recently at a local library about the events leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack that drew the United States into World War II. The troops at Pearl Harbor were basically caught unaware that hundreds of Japanese airplanes were bearing down on their position and had the American troops been on a higher state of readiness the attack would have likely been far less devastating. Of particular fascination to me, in light of the topic of communication, is that according to this researcher the United States had prior knowledge about the imminent attacks but the message about the attacks was delivered through non-priority channels and not marked as a "Priority" message and as such was placed into a different message tray. The persons on radar duty that morning could not get anyone to seriously believe that the "large blip" they were seeing on their radar might not be friendly airplanes. The two radar men who discovered the "blips" had less than a week of functional radar experience between them and as such had no experience base from which to push for a more serious interpretation by higher command. In short, there were symptoms of a pending attack available that could have warned those in command of the looming danger but those symptoms were never treated with the seriousness they deserved.

The "Chapter Three: Communication and Organizational Problem Solving" from my Beyond Chat book (to be published next year) talks about communication as a problem solving tool. In reality, communication can also be thought of as a problem avoidance tool. If the symptoms that indicated an pending attack had been properly interpreted by the American command many of the problems in Pearl Harbor on December 7th could have been avoided.

Take a look at the story in the Beyond Chat chapters about an airplane ride from Chicago to Spain to get a real-world idea of how symptoms became important to a group of passengers, flight attendants and the pilot to shift your thinking into the proper framework for this week's discussion.