Effective communication is a purposive symbolic interchange resulting in a ‘workable understanding’ between the sender and receiver.  How can mangers in an organization design communication to get effective results?

Communication is a very effective management toll, and having control over it is vital.  This requires that it be planned, executed and evaluated against defined and clear objectives.  It hast to be systematic and consistent, as well as appropriate to crating messages which have the desired impact.

For effective communication you must organize your ideas for meeting the needs of your target audience – not your own.  You must use patters of organization which are relevant to the communication situation, but the basic objective should always be that the pattern is such that it reaches and makes the right impact on your receivers.

Structure in communication can, therefore, be divided into logical sequences and psychological sequences.

While good sequencing is the most important ingredient of successful communication, it is also necessary that you effectively build up a good presentation format, if you are to deliver the right communication package.

Essentially, thus, developing ideas includes all the ways by which you make meaningful or elaborate or support the more general concepts in a sequence.  In other words, idea development imparts vitality or clarity to a concept and gives credibility to the more abstract ideas in your fundamental outline.  The quality of communication is, thus, inextricably linked with the quality of its idea development.

Specifying your receivers (target audience)

The next most important step in planning communications is identifying and defining the right target audiences for the message.  Clear judgment is called for at this point. If available, research data can be used to define the target group.  In fact, this is ideal.  You must infer the most descriptive category for the most influential target audiences to pitch your communications.

Furthermore, you need to identify the roles of your receivers and bring about a shift in their perceptions – which are more positive in nature.  Since this step will essentially determine the idea-sequence of your communication, as well as the techniques and devices to control your receivers, extreme care should be taken to ensure accuracy.

Some of the following means can be used to develop ideas and contribute significantly to better communication:

Fact and statistics – observed or generalized data.

Comparisons and contrasts – analogies and dissimilarities.

Examples and case studies – an account of an event of incident, real or hypothetical, to explain or dramatize ideas.