I hear people refer all the time to a seemingly indisputable fact that we are neck deep in The Information Age. Everything about the way we generate it, consume it, store it, and share it is changing, rapidly.
But while those trends are real and will continue for the foreseeable future, there is a bigger shift going on right now, that falls quite neatly in line behind The Information Age. We are now in The Communication Age, where a person’s or an organization’s ability to communicate clearly within this mass of gathered information is the new competitive advantage. Changes in information are continuing for sure, but much of that change has already made huge impacts on business and people. We all know that we need to have the correct information at our fingertips, and that we need to have a plan to deal with it.
But only a precious few organizations have embraced this new Communication Age. Only a precious few have realized that their people need to be able to communicate what is most important, and do so quickly, clearly and correctly. Communication skills have become mission critical for organizations.
The world is moving fast, the information and the content are coming at us as if from a fire hose, time is precious, organizations are leaner, attention spans have dropped, and everyone is being socially conditioned to “change the channel” very quickly. In other words, there is a world of opportunity for the person and the organization who can make things simpler, communicate quickly and clearly, and simply respect other people’s time.
Do you know what it feels like to listen to someone who cannot get to the point? It is frustrating, to say the least. Now the harder question… Do people feel that way when they are listening to you?
Think about it.
We are in a new age, where the ability to quickly and clearly communicate things in valuable ways is the new competitive advantage. When you speak, do you make things harder or easier for those around you?
Think about that as well.
Good luck.
Photo by elycefeliz used under the following license.
[…] recently wrote about the shift from the Information Age to the newly sprouting Communication Age. Information is now fully a part of our lives. It is baked into everything we do. And we are now on […]