CHAPTER ONE

Information, Communications, and Understanding

CONCERN WITH “INFORMATION” and “communications” started shortly before World War I. Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, which appeared in 1910, is still one of the foundation books. And a long line of illustrious successors—from Ludwig Wittgenstein through Norbert Wiener and A. N. Chomsky’s “mathematical linguistics” today—has continued the work on the logic of information. Roughly contemporaneous is the interest in the meaning of communication; Alfred Korzybski started on the study of “general semantics,” i.e. on the meaning of communications, around the turn of the century. It was World War I, however, which made the entire Western world communications-conscious. When the diplomatic documents of 1914 in the German and Russian achives were published, soon after the end of the fighting, it became appallingly clear that the catastrophe had been caused, in large measure, by communications failure despite copious and reliable information. And the war itself—especially the total failure of its one and only strategic concept, Winston Churchill’s Gallipoli campaign in 1915–16—was patently a tragicomedy of noncommunications. At the same time, the period immediately following World War I—a period of industrial strife and of total noncommunication between Westerners and “revolutionary” Communists (and a little later, a equally revolutionary Fascists)—showed both the need for, and the lack of, a valid theory or a functioning practice of communications, inside existing institutions, inside existing societies, and between various leadership groups and their various “publics.”

As a result, communications suddenly became, forty to fifty years ago, a consuming interest of scholars as well as of practitioners. Above all, communications in management has this last half century been a central concern to students and practitioners in all institutions—business, the military, public administration, hospital administration, university administration, and research administration. In no other area have intelligent men and women worked harder or with greater dedication than psychologists, human relations experts, managers, and management students have worked on improving communications in our major institutions.

We have more attempts at communications today, that is, more attempts to talk to others, and a surfeit of communications media, unimaginable to the men who, around the time of World War I, started to work on the problems of communicating. The trickle of books on communications has become a raging torrent. I recently received a bibliography prepared for a graduate seminar on communications; it ran to ninety-seven pages. A recent anthology (The Human Dialogue, edited by Floyd W. Matson and Ashley Montagu; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1967) contains articles by forty-nine different contributors.

Yet communications has proven as elusive as the unicorn. Each of the forty-nine contributors to The Human Dialogue has a theory of communications which is incompatible with all the others. The noise level has gone up so fast that no one can really listen any more to all that babble about communications. But there is clearly less and less communicating. The communications gap within institutions and between groups in society has been widening steadily—to the point where it threatens to become an unbridgeable gulf of total misunderstanding.

In the meantime, there is an information explosion. Every professional and every executive—in fact, everyone except the deaf-mute—suddenly has access to data in inexhaustible abundance. All of us feel—and overeat—very much like the little boy who has been left alone in the candy store. But what has to be done to make this cornucopia of data redound to information, let alone to knowledge? We get a great many answers. But the one thing clear so far is that no one really has an answer. Despite “information theory” and “data processing,” no one yet has actually seen, let alone used, an “information system,” or a “data base.” The one thing we do know, though, is that the abundance of information changes the communications problem and makes it both more urgent and even less tractable.

There is a tendency today to give up on communications. In psychology, for instance, the fashion today is the T-group with its “sensitivity training.” The avowed aim is not communications, but self-awareness. T-groups focus on the “I” and not on the “thou.” Ten or twenty years ago the rhetoric stressed “empathy”; now it stresses “doing one’s thing.” However needed self-knowledge may be, communication is needed at least as much (if, indeed, self-knowledge is possible without action on others, that is, without communications). Whether the T-groups are sound psychology and effective psychotherapy is well beyond my competence and the scope of this paper. But their popularity attests to the failure of our attempts at communications.

Despite the sorry state of communications in theory and practice, we have, however, learned a good deal about information and communications. Most of it, though, has not come out of the work on communications to which we have devoted so much time and energy. It has been the by product of work in a large number of seemingly unrelated fields, from learning theory to genetics and electronic engineering. We equally have a lot of experience—though mostly of failure—in a good many practical situations in all kinds of institutions. Communications we may, indeed, never understand. But communications in organizations—call it managerial communications—we do know something about by now. It is a much narrower topic than communications per se—but it is the topic to which this paper shall address itself.

We are, to be sure, still far away from mastery of communications, even in organizations. What knowledge we have about communications is scattered and, as a rule, not accessible let alone in applicable form. But at least we increasingly know what does not work and, sometimes, why it does not work. Indeed, we can say bluntly that most of today’s brave attempts at communication in organizations—whether business, labour unions, government agencies, or universities—is based on assumptions that have been proven to be invalid—and that, therefore, these efforts cannot have results. And perhaps we can even anticipate what might work.

What We Have Learned

We have learned, mostly through doing the wrong things, the following four fundamentals of communications:

1. Communication is perception,

2. Communication is expectations,

3. Communication is involvement,

4. Communication and information are totally different. But information presupposes functioning communications.

Communication Is Perception

An old riddle asked by the mystics of many religions—the Zen

Buddhists, the Sufis of Islam, or the rabbis of the Talmud—asks: “Is there a sound in the forest if a tree crashes down and no one is around to hear it?” We now know that the right answer to this is “no.” There are sound waves. But there is no sound unless someone perceives it. Sound is created by perception. Sound is communication.

This may seem trite; after all, the mystics of old already knew this, for they, too, always answered that there is no sound unless someone can hear it. Yet the implications of this rather trite statement are great indeed.

a. First, it means that it is the recipient who communicates. The so-called communicator, that is, the person who emits the communication, does not communicate. He utters. Unless there is someone who hears, there is no communication. There is only noise. The communicator speaks or writes or sings—but he does not communicate. Indeed he cannot communicate. He can only make it possible, or impossible, for a recipient—or rather percipient—to perceive.

b. Perception, we know, is not logic. It is experience. This means, in the first place, that one always perceives a configuration. One cannot perceive single specifics. They are always part of a total picture. The Silent Language (as Edward T. Hall called it in the title of his pioneering work ten years ago)—that is, the gestures, the tone of voice, the environment all together, not to mention the cultural and social referents—cannot be dissociated from the spoken language. In fact, without them the spoken word has no meaning and cannot communicate. It is not only that the same words, e.g. “I enjoyed meeting you,” will be heard as having a wide variety of meanings. Whether they are heard as warm or as icy cold, as endearment or as rejection, depends on their setting in the silent language, such as the tone of voice or the occasion. More important is that by themselves, that is, without being part of the total configuration of occasion, value silent language, and so on, the phrase has no meaning at all. By itself it cannot make possible communication. It cannot be understood. Indeed, it cannot be heard. To paraphrase an old proverb of the Human Relations school: “One cannot communicate a word; the whole man always comes with it.”

c. But we know about perception also that one can only perceive what one is capable of perceiving. Just as the human ear does not hear sounds above a certain pitch, so does human perception all together not perceive what is beyond its range of perception. It may, of course, hear physically, or see visually, but it cannot accept. The stimulus cannot become communication.

This is a very fancy way of stating something the teachers of rhetoric have known for a very long time—though the practitioners of communications tend to forget it again and again. In Plato’s Phaedrus, which, among other things, is also the earliest extant treatise on rhetoric, Socrates points out that one has to talk to people in terms of their own experience, that is, that one has to use a carpenter’s metaphors when talking to carpenters, and so on. One can only communicate in the recipient’s language or altogether in his terms. And the terms have to be experience-based. It, therefore, does very little good to try to explain terms to people. They will not be able to receive them if the terms are not of their own experience. They simply exceed their perception capacity.

The connection between experience, perception, and concept formation, that is, cognition, is, we now know, infinitely subtler and richer than any earlier philosopher imagined. But one fact is proven and comes out strongly in the most disparate work, e.g. that of Piaget in Switzerland, that of B.F. Skinner of Harvard, or that of Jerome Bruner (also of Harvard). Percept and concept in the learner, whether child or adult, are not separate. We cannot perceive unless we also conceive. But we also cannot form concepts unless we can perceive. To communicate a concept is impossible unless the recipient can perceive it, that is, unless it is within his perception.

There is a very old saying among writers: “Difficulties with a sentence always mean confused thinking. It is not the sentence that needs straightening out, it is the thought behind it.” In writing we attempt, of course, to communicate with ourselves. An unclear sentence is one that exceeds our own capacity for perception. Working on the sentence, that is, working on what is normally called communications, cannot solve the problem. We have to work on our own concepts first to be able to understand what we are trying to say—and only then can we write the sentence.

In communicating, whatever the medium, the first question has to be, “Is this communication within the recipient’s range of perception? Can he receive it?”

The “range of perception” is, of course, physiological and largely (though not entirely) set by physical limitations of man’s animal body. When we speak of communications, however, the most important limitations on perception are usually cultural and emotional rather than physical. That fanatics are not being convinced by rational arguments, we have known for thousands of years. Now we are beginning to understand that it is not “argument” that is lacking. Fanatics do not have the ability to perceive a communication which goes beyond their range of emotions. Before this is possible, their emotions would have to be altered. In other words, no one is really “in touch with reality,” if by that we mean complete openness to evidence. The distinction between sanity and paranoia is not in the ability to perceive, but in the ability to learn, that is, in the ability to change one’s emotions on the basis of experience.

That perception is conditioned by what we are capable of perceiving was realized forty years ago by the most quoted but probably least heeded of all students of organization, Mary Parker Follett, especially in her collected essays, Dynamic Administration (London: Management Publications Trust, 1949). Follett taught that a disagreement or a conflict is likely not to be about the answers, or, indeed, about anything ostensible. It is, in most cases, the result of incongruity in perceptions. What A sees so vividly, B does not see at all. And, therefore, what A argues has no pertinence to B’ s concerns, and vice versa. Both, Follett argued, are likely to see reality. But each is likely to see a different aspect thereof. The world, and not only the material world, is multidimensional. Yet one can only see one dimension at a time. One rarely realizes that there could be other dimensions, and that something that is so obvious to us and so clearly validated by our emotional experience has other dimensions, a back and sides, which are entirely different and which, therefore, lead to entirely different perception. The old story about the blind men and the elephant in which every one of them, upon encountering this strange beast, feels one of the elephant’s parts, his leg, his trunk, his hide, and reports an entirely different conclusion, each held tenaciously, is simply a story of the human condition. And there is no possibility of communication until this is understood and until he who has felt the hide of the elephant goes over to him who has felt the leg and feels the leg himself. There is no possibility of communications, in other words, unless we first know what the recipient, the true communicator, can see and why.

Communication Is Expectations

We perceive, as a rule, what we expect to perceive. We see largely what we expect to see, and we hear largely what we expect to hear. That the unexpected may be resented is not the important thing—though most of the writers on communications in business or government think it is. What is truly important is that the unexpected is usually not received at all. It is either not seen or heard but ignored. Or it is misunderstood, that is, mis-seen as the expected or misheard as the expected.

On this we now have a century or more of experimentation. The results are quite unambiguous. The human mind attempts to fit impressions and stimuli into a frame of expectations. It resists vigorously any attempts to make it “change its mind,” that is, to perceive what it does not expect to perceive or not to perceive what it expects to perceive. It is, of course, possible to alert the human mind to the fact that what it perceives is contrary to its expectations. But this first requires that we understand what it expects to perceive. It then requires that there be an unmistakable signal—“this is different,” that is, a shock which breaks continuity. A “gradual” change in which the mind is supposedly led by small, incremental steps to realize that what is perceived is not what it expects to perceive will not work. It will rather reinforce the expectations and will make it even more certain that what will be perceived is what the recipient expects to perceive.

Before we can communicate, we must, therefore, know what the recipient expects to see and to hear. Only then can we know whether communication can utilize his expectations—and what they are—or whether there is need for the ‘shock of alienation,” for an “awakening” that breaks through the recipient’s expectations and forces him to realize that the unexpected is happening.

Communication Is Involvement

Many years ago psychologists stumbled on a strange phenomenon in their studies of memory, a phenomenon that, at first, upset all their hypotheses. In order to test memory, the psychologists compiled a list of words to be shown to their experimental subjects for varying times as a test of their retention capacity. As control, a list of nonsense words, mere jumbles of letters, were devised to find out to what extent understanding influenced memory. Much to the surprise of these early experimenters almost a century ago or so, their subjects (mostly students, of course) showed totally uneven memory retention of individual words. More surprising, they showed amazingly high retention of the nonsense words. The explanation of the first phenomenon is fairly obvious. Words are not mere information. They do carry emotional charges. And, therefore, words with unpleasant or threatening associations tend to be suppressed, words with pleasant associations retained. In fact, this selective retention by emotional association has since been used to construct tests for emotional disorders and for personality profiles.

The relatively high retention rate of nonsense words was a greater problem. It was expected, after all, that no one would really remember words that had no meaning at all. But it has become clear over the years that the memory for these words, though limited, exists precisely because these words have no meaning. For this reason, they also make no demand. They are truly neuter. In respect to them, memory could be said to be truly mechanical, showing neither emotional preference nor emotional rejection.

A similar phenomenon, known to every newspaper editor, is the amazingly high readership and retention of the fillers, the little three- or five-line bits of irrelevant incidental information that are being used to balance a page. Why should anybody want to read, let alone remember, that it first became fashionable to wear different-coloured hose on each leg at the court of some long-forgotten duke? Why should anybody want to read, let alone remember, when and where baking powder was first used? Yet there is no doubt that these little titbits of irrelevancy are read and, above all, that they are remembered far better than almost anything in the daily paper except the great screaming headlines of the catastrophes. The answer is that these fillers make no demands. It is precisely their total irrelevancy that accounts for their being remembered.

Communications are always propaganda. The emitter always wants “to get something across.” Propaganda, we now know, is both a great deal more powerful than the rationalists with their belief in “open discussion” believe, and a great deal less powerful than the mythmakers of propaganda, e.g. a Dr. Goebbels in the Nazi regime, believed and wanted us to believe. Indeed, the danger of total propaganda is not that the propaganda will be believed. The danger is that nothing will be believed and that every communication becomes suspect. In the end, no communication is being received any more. Everything anyone says is considered a demand and is resisted, resented, and in effect not heard at all. The end results of total propaganda are not fanatics, but cynics—but this, of course, may be even greater and more dangerous corruption.

Communication, in other words, always makes demands. It always demands that the recipient become somebody, do something, believe something. It always appeals to motivation. If, in other words, communication fits in with the aspirations, the values, the purposes of the recipient, it is powerful. If it goes against his aspirations, his values, his motivations, it is likely not to be received at all, or, at best, to be resisted. Of course, at its most powerful, communication brings about conversion, that is, a change of personality, of values, beliefs, aspirations. But this is the rare, existential event, and one against which the basic psychological forces of every human being are strongly organized. Even the Lord, the Bible reports, first had to strike Saul blind before he could raise him as Paul. Communications aiming at conversion demand surrender. By and large, therefore, there is no communication unless the message can key in to the recipient’s own values, at least to some degree.

Communication and Information Are Different and Largely Opposite—Yet Interdependent

a. Where communication is perception, information is logic. As such, information is purely formal and has no meaning. It is impersonal rather than interpersonal. The more it can be freed of the human component, that is, of such things as emotions and values, expectations and perceptions, the more valid and reliable does it become. Indeed, it becomes increasingly informative.

All through history, the problem has been how to glean a little information out of communications, that is, out of relationships between people, based on perception. All through history, the problem has been to isolate the information content from an abundance of perception. Now, all of a sudden, we have the capacity to provide information—both because of the conceptual work of the logicians, especially the symbolic logic of Russell and Whitehead, and because of the technical work on data processing and data storage, that is, of course, especially because of the computer and its tremendous capacity to store, manipulate, and transmit data. Now, in other words, we have the opposite problem from the one mankind has always been struggling with. Now we have the problem of handling information per se, devoid of any communication content.

b. The requirements for effective information are the opposite of those for effective communication. Information is, for instance, always specific. We perceive a configuration in communications; but we convey specific individual data in the information process. Indeed, information is, above all, a principle of economy. The fewer data needed, the better the information. And an overload of information, that is, anything much beyond what is truly needed, leads to a complete information blackout. It does not enrich, but impoverishes.

c. At the same time, information presupposes communication. Information is always encoded. To be received, let alone to be used, the code must be known and understood by the recipient. This requires prior agreement, that is, some communication. At the very least, the recipient has to know what the data pertain to. Are the figures on a piece of computer tape the height of mountain tops or the cash balances of Federal Reserve member banks? In either case, the recipient would have to know what mountains are or what banks are to get any information out of the data.

The prototype information system may well have been the peculiar language known as Armee Deutsch (Army German), which served as language of command in the Imperial Austrian Army prior to 1918. A polyglot army in which officers, noncommissioned officers, and men often had no language in common, it functioned remarkably well with fewer than two hundred specific words, “fire,” for instance, or “at ease,” each of which had only one totally unambiguous meaning. The meaning was always an action. And the words were learned in and through actions, i.e. in what behaviourists now call operant conditioning. The tensions in the Austrian army after many decades of nationalist turmoil were very great indeed. Social intercourse between members of different nationalities serving in the same unit became increasingly difficult, if not impossible. But to the very end, the information system functioned. It was completely formal, completely rigid, completely logical in that each word had only one possible meaning; and it rested on completely pre-established communication regarding the specific response to a certain set of sound waves. This example, however, shows also that the effectiveness of an information system depends on the willingness and ability to think through carefully what information is needed by whom for what purposes, and then on the systematic creation of communication between the various parties to the system as to the meaning of each specific input and output. The effectiveness, in other words, depends on the pre-establishment of communication.

d. Communication communicates better the more levels of meaning it has and the less possible it is, therefore, to quantify it.

Medieval aesthetics held that a work of art communicates on a number of levels, at least three if not four: the literal, the metaphorical, the allegorical, and the symbolic. The work of art that most consciously converted this theory into artistic practice was, of course, Dante’s Divina Commedia. If, by information, we mean something that can be quantified, then the Divina Commedia is without any information content whatever. But it is precisely the ambiguity, the multiplicity of levels on which this book can be read, from being a fairy tale to being a grand synthesis of metaphysics, that makes it the overpowering work of art it is, and the immediate communication which it has been to generations of readers.

Communications, in other words, may not be dependent on information. Indeed, the most perfect communications may be purely shared experiences, without any logic whatever. Perception has primacy rather than information.

I fully realize that this summary of what we have learned is gross oversimplification. I fully realize that I have glossed over some of the most hotly contested issues in psychology and perception. Indeed, I may well be accused of brushing aside most of the issues which the students of learning and of perception would themselves consider central and important.

But my aim has, of course, not been to survey these big areas. My concern is not with learning or with perception. It is with communications, and, in particular, with communications in the large organization, be it business enterprise, government agency, university, or armed service.

This summary might also be criticized for being trite, if not obvious. No one, it might be said, could possibly be surprised at its statements. They say what everybody knows. But whether this be so or not, it is not what everybody does. On the contrary, the logical implications of these apparently simple and obvious statements for communications in organizations are at odds with current practice and, indeed, deny validity to the honest and serious efforts to communicate which we have been making for many decades now.

What, then, can our knowledge and our experience teach us about communications in organizations, about the reasons for our failures, and about the prerequisities for success in the future?

1. For centuries we have attempted communication downward. This, however, cannot work, no matter how hard and how intelligently we try. It cannot work, first, because it focuses on what we want to say. It assumes, in other words, that the utterer communicates. But we know that all he does is utter. Communication is the act of the recipient. What we have been trying to do is to work on the emitter, specifically on the manager, the administrator, the commander, to make him capable of being a better communicator. But all one can communicate downward are commands, that is, prearranged signals. One cannot communicate downward anything connected with understanding, let alone with motivation. This requires communication upward; from those who perceive to those who want to reach their perception.

This does not mean that managers should stop working on clarity in what they say or write. Far from it. But it does mean that how we say something comes only after we have learned what to say. And this cannot be found out by “talking to,” no matter how well it is being done. “Letters to the Employees,” no matter how well done, will be a waste unless the writer knows what employees can perceive, expect to perceive, and want to do. They are a waste unless they are based on the recipient’s rather than the emitter’s perception.

2. But “listening” does not work either. The Human Relations School of Elton Mayo, forty years ago, recognized the failure of the traditional approach to communications. Its answer—especially as developed in Mayo’s two famous books, The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization (2nd edn., Boston: Harvard University, 1946) and The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization (Boston: Harvard University, 1945)—was to enjoin listening. Instead of starting out with what I, that is, the executive, want to get across, the executive should start out by finding out what subordinates want to know, are interested in, are, in other words, receptive to. To this day, the human relations prescription, though rarely practised, remains the classic formula.

Of course, listening is a prerequisite to communication. But it is not adequate, and it cannot, by itself, work. Perhaps the reason why it is not being used widely, despite the popularity of the slogan, is precisely that, where tried, it has failed to work. Listening first assumes that the superior will understand what he is being told. It assumes, in other words, that the subordinates can communicate. It is hard to see, however, why the subordinate should be able to do what his superior cannot do. In fact, there is no reason for assuming he can. There is no reason, in other words, to believe that listening results any less in misunderstanding and miscommunications than does talking. In addition, the theory of listening does not take into account that communications is involvement. It does not bring out the subordinate’s preferences and desires, his values and aspirations. It may explain the reasons for misunderstanding. But it does not lay down a basis for understanding.

This is not to say that listening is wrong, any more than the futility of downward communications furnishes any argument against attempts to write well, to say things clearly and simply, and to speak the language of those whom one addresses rather than one’s own jargon. Indeed, the realization that communications have to be upward—or rather that they have to start with the recipient, rather than the emitter, which underlies the concept of listening—is absolutely sound and vital. But listening is only the starting point.

3. More and better information does not solve the communications problem, does not bridge the communications gap. On the contrary, the more information the greater is the need for functioning and effective communication. The more information, in other words, the greater is the communications gap likely to be.

The more impersonal and formal the information process in the first place, the more will it depend on prior agreement on meaning and application, that is, on communications. In the second place, the more effective the information process, the more impersonal and formal will it become, the more will it separate human beings and thereby require separate, but also much greater, efforts, to re-establish the human relationship, the relationship of communication. It may be said that the effectiveness of the information process will depend increasingly on our ability to communicate, and that, in the absence of effective communication—that is, in the present situation—the information revolution cannot really produce information. All it can produce is data.

It can also be said—and this may well be more important—that the test of an information system will increasingly be the degree to which it frees human beings from concern with information and allows them to work on communications. The test, in particular, of the computer will be how much time it gives executives and professionals on all levels for direct, personal, face-to-face relationships with other people.

It is fashionable today to measure the utilization of a computer by the number of hours it runs during one day. But this is not even a measurement of the computer’s efficiency. It is purely a measurement of input. The only measurement of output is the degree to which availability of information enables human beings not to control, that is, not to spend time trying to get a little information on what happened yesterday. And the only measurement of this, in turn, is the amount of time that becomes available for the job only human beings can do, the job of communication. By this test, of course, almost no computer today is being used properly. Most of them are being misused, that is, are being used to justify spending even more time on control rather than to relieve human beings from controlling by giving them information. The reason for this is quite clearly the lack of prior communication, that is, of agreement and decision on what information is needed, by whom and for what purposes, and what it means operationally. The reason for the misuse of the computer is, so to speak, the lack of anything comparable to the Armee Deutsch of yesterday’s much-ridiculed Imperial Austrian Army with its two hundred words of command which even the dumbest recruit could learn in two weeks’ time.

The Information Explosion, in other words, is the most impelling reason to go to work on communications. Indeed, the frightening communications gap all around us—between management and workers; between business and government; between faculty and students, and between both of them and university administration; between producers and consumers; and so on—may well reflect in some measure the tremendous increase in information without a commensurate increase in communications.

Can we then say anything constructive about communication? Can we do anything? We can say that communication has to start from the intended recipient of communications rather than from the emitter. In terms of traditional organization we have to start upward. Downward communications cannot work and do not work. They come after upward communications have successfully been established. They are reaction rather than action, response rather than initiative.

But we can also say that it is not enough to listen. The upward communication must first be focused on something that both recipient and emitter can perceive, focused on something that is common to both of them. And second, it must be focused on the motivation of the intended recipient. It must, from the beginning, be informed by his values, beliefs, and aspirations.

One example—but only an example: There have been promising results with organizational communication that started out with the demand by the superior that the subordinate think through and present to the superior his own conclusions as to what major contribution to the organization—or to the unit within the organization—the subordinate should be expected to perform and should be held accountable for. What the subordinate then comes up with is rarely what the superior expects. Indeed, the first aim of the exercise is precisely to bring out the divergence in perception between superior and subordinate. But the perception is focused, and focused on something that is real to both parties. To realize that they see the same reality differently is in itself already communication.

Second, in this approach, the intended recipient of communication—in this case the subordinate—is given access to experience that enables him to understand. He is given access to the reality of decision making, the problems of priorities, the choice between what one likes to do and what the situation demands, and above all, the responsibility for a decision. He may not see the situation the same way the superior does—in fact, he rarely will or even should. But he may gain an understanding of the complexity of the superior’s situation, and above all of the fact that the complexity is not of the superior’s making, but is inherent in the situation itself.

Finally, the communication, even if it consists of a “no” to the subordinate’s conclusions, is firmly focused on the aspirations, values, and motivation of the intended recipient. In fact, it starts out with the question, “What would you want to do?” It may then end up with the command, “This is what I tell you to do.” But at least it forces the superior to realize that he is overriding the desires of the subordinate. It forces him to explain, if not to try to persuade. At least he knows that he has a problem—and so does the subordinate.

A similar approach has worked in another organizational situation in which communication has been traditionally absent: the performance appraisal, and especially the appraisal interview. Performance appraisal is today standard in large organizations (except in Japan, where promotion and pay go by seniority so that performance appraisal would serve little purpose). We know that most people want to know where they stand. One of the most common complaints of employees in organizations is, indeed, that they are not being appraised and are not being told whether they do well or poorly.

The appraisal forms may be filled out. But the appraisal interview in which the appraiser is expected to discuss his performance with a man is almost never conducted. The exceptions are a few organizations in which performance appraisals are considered a communications tool rather than a rating device. This means specifically that the performance appraisal starts out with the question, “What has this man done well?” It then asks, “And what, therefore, should he be able to do well?” And then it asks, “And what would he have to learn or to acquire to be able to get the most from his capacities and achievements?” This, first, focuses on specific achievement. It focuses on things the employee himself is likely to perceive clearly and, in fact, gladly. It also focuses on his own aspirations, values, and desires. Weaknesses are then seen as limitations to what the employee himself can do well and wants to do, rather than as defects. Indeed, the proper conclusion from this approach to appraisal is not the question, “What should the employee do?” but “What should the organization and I, his boss, do?” A proper conclusion is not “What does this communicate to the employee?” It is “What does this communicate to both of us, subordinate and superior?”

These are only examples, and rather insignificant ones at that. But perhaps they illustrate conclusions to which our experience with communications—largely an experience of failure—and the work in learning, memory, perception, and motivation point.

The start of communications in organization must be to get the intended recipient himself to try to communicate. This requires a focus on (a) the impersonal but common task, and (b) on the intended recipient’s values, achievements, and aspirations. It also requires the experience of responsibility.

Perception is limited by what can be perceived and geared to what one expects to perceive. Perception, in other words, presupposes experience. Communication within organization, therefore, presupposes that the members of the organization have the foundation of experience to receive and perceive. The artist can convey this experience in symbolical form: he can communicate what his readers or viewers have never experienced. But ordinary managers, administrators, and professors are not likely to be artists. The recipients must, therefore, have actual experience themselves and directly rather than through the vicarious symbols.

Communications in organization demands that the masses, whether they be employees or students, share in the responsibility of decisions to the fullest possible extent. They must understand because they have been through it, rather than accept because it is being explained to them.

I shall never forget the German trade union leader, a faithful Socialist, who was shattered by his first exposure to the deliberations of the Board of Overseers of a large company to which he had been elected as an employee member. That the amount of money available was limited and that, indeed, there was very little money available was limited and that, indeed, there was very little money available for all the demands that had to be met, was one surprise. But the pain and complexity of the decisions between various investments, e.g. between modernizing the plant to safeguard workers’ jobs and building workers’ houses to safeguard their health and family life, was a much bigger and totally unexpected experience. But, as he told me with a half-sheepish, half-rueful grin, the greatest shocker was the realization that all the things he considered important turned out to be irrelevant to the decisions in which he found himself taking an active and responsible part. Yet this man was neither stupid nor dogmatic. He was simply inexperienced—and, therefore, inaccessible to communication.

The traditional defence of paternalism has always been “It’s a complex world; it needs the expert, the man who knows best.” But paternalism, as our work in perception, learning, and motivation is beginning to bring out, really can work only in a simple world. When people can understand what Papa does because they share his experiences and his perception, then Papa can actually make the decisions for them. In a complex world there is need for a shared experience in the decisions, or there is no common perception, no communications, and, therefore, neither acceptance of the decisions, nor ability to carry them out. The ability to understand presupposes prior communication. It presupposes agreement on meaning.

There will be no communication, in sum, if it is conceived as go ing from the “I” to the “Thou.” Communication only works from one member of “us” to another. Communications in organization—and this may be the true lesson of our communications failure and the true measure of our communications need—are not a means of organization. They are a mode of organization.

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Paper read before the Fellows of the International Academy of Management, Tokyo, Japan, October 1969. Published in Management Today, March 1970, as “What Communication Means.”