Abstract

This article focuses on managerial communication. One important day-to-day task for the chief executive officer (CEO) is communication, digesting information and shaping ideas, yes, but, even more centrally, the business of listening and explaining. Decisions and policies have no effect nor any real existence unless they are recognized and understood by those who must put them into effect. As with a board of directors, an operating business organization acquires a sense of purpose not just because one or two leaders have something in the back of their minds, but because that vision is shared and sold. It sounds banal to say that a CEO is first and foremost in the human relations and communication businesses, but the point is too important to leave to inference. No other item on the chief executive's duty list has more leverage on the organization's prospects. One of the first lessons a manager learns while climbing the corporate ladder is how little he can accomplish by relying on his own brains alone. The higher an individual goes in management, the more obvious it becomes that an executive is only as good as the group around him. On the way upward, that group expands steadily to include more line managers plus a variety of staff people, including some true gems, a few key individuals who are nameless and faceless to the outside world, but who supply data, ideas, proposals, and criticism that contribute enormously to the smooth working of the organization.