Best Advice: You Can Never Have Too Much Good Communication

This post is part of a series in which LinkedIn Influencers share the best advice they've ever received. Read all the posts here.

It was 1996. I was dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas, overseeing three academic departments, a museum, and a performing arts center. I had been offered the position of provost at the University of Iowa. Given the consuming nature of my current responsibilities, it seemed impossible to oversee ALL the academic programs at a nationally ranked public research university.

The prospect was overwhelming.

I sought advice from Bryce Jordan, a friend who had recently retired as president of Penn State University. I asked Bryce, “What’s the one piece of advice you’d give me?” He didn’t pause a nanosecond. He didn’t think it over. His answer was pure and simple: “You can never have too much good communication.”

I’ve carried Bryce’s powerful advice with me for nearly two decades.

After we talked, I jotted down a list of people with whom I would need to communicate at the University of Iowa: more than 30 direct reports, including 11 deans, numerous museum and library directors, international programs, and 12 office colleagues.

Like kudzu, my list kept growing—starting with my boss (the university president), her seven vice presidents, the faculty senate, key alumni, and the provosts of Iowa’s other public universities.

How was I supposed to wrap my head around the sheer volume and frequency of communication? My first mistake was trying to keep this all in my head. When that failed, I resorted to a large sheet of graph paper (remember that?), listing constituents down the left side and my available communication “channels” (e.g., email, meetings, op-eds, speeches) across the top.

Then, I filled in the squares with key touch points: monthly one-on-ones with the university president, twice-monthly lunches with the faculty senate president, weekly internal staff meetings, and periodic meetings with each dean, to name a few. I also listed faculty senate meetings, writing a column for the student newspaper, quarterly Foundation Board meetings, rotating lunches with endowed professors, and on and on.

After doing all this graphing business, I realized I needed help. I worked with internal staff to assign people to specific columns, rows or squares to ensure that when I couldn't be in two places at once, other staff would facilitate the needed communications with each stakeholder.

Now, almost two decades later, my very different job as the new CEO of ACT, Inc., has me staring at a very different spreadsheet (having graduated from graph paper). The left side lists our board members and chair, my cabinet (twelve direct reports listed separately), ACT’s employees (almost 1,400 people), regional office directors, state representatives, B2C customers (such as student test takers and their parents), and B2B customers (including state governments and agencies, school districts, and corporate partners).

Compared to 1996, the channels for communication have vastly changed. The standard channels of email, one-on-one and group meetings, and op-eds are still present, but new media have also emerged: video conferencing, social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), and blogs.

As I filled in the cells—periodic meetings with all employees, weekly cabinet meetings for direct reports, blogging for Huffington Post, LinkedIn “Influencer” posts, rotational meetings with the heads of federal and state agencies, and conference presentations—I realized I may be wrong about the past two decades.

Perhaps things haven’t changed so drastically. While the channels have proliferated, Bryce’s powerful advice still holds true: “You can never have too much good communication.”

Attached to this advice is a big lesson learned over years of trial and error. Communication cannot be left to chance. You need a plan. You need to create your own spreadsheet. You need multiple approaches—meetings, emails, one-on-ones, YouTube videos, a blog or two. And you need to actively work your plan daily, even hourly.

In an accelerated, “always on” world, we must cut through the cacophony and consider every communication channel, formal or informal, analog or digital. Some channels may look different in 2014 than they did in 1996, but execution remains the same.

Constant, clear, transparent communication: it’s never easy, but it will always be critical to your success as a leader.

It’s your turn. Tell me how you communicate as an effective leader in today’s digitized world. We all want to know.

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Jon Whitmore is the CEO of ACT, Inc. ACT’s services include a broad range of assessments encompassing all levels of the educational continuum and a growing array of assessment systems supportive of economic and workforce development worldwide. Before joining ACT, Jon was the president of San Jose State University and Texas Tech University, provost of the University of Iowa, and a professor of theatre at numerous universities.

Interested in more from Jon? Follow Jon on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Huffington Post.

Photo: Vetta via Getty Images