Communication and Records
The communication process
Communication transfers meaning from sender to receiver through a medium, confirmed by feedback. Elements: sender, encoding, message, channel, receiver, decoding, feedback and noise (any interference).
Channels and directions
- Internal: memorandum, notice board, circular, staff meeting, report, intranet.
- External: letter, email, telephone, advertisement, invoice, press release.
- Direction: downward (instructions), upward (reports, complaints), horizontal (between departments). The grapevine is informal, fast and often inaccurate.
Business letter conventions
Letterhead, reference, date, inside address, salutation, subject line, body, complimentary close, signature and enclosures. Match salutation to close: Dear Sir/Madam → Yours faithfully; Dear Mr Ngu → Yours sincerely.
Internal documents
- Memorandum: internal, no salutation and no inside address; laid out as To / From / Date / Subject.
- Circular: one message to many recipients.
- Notice: announcement of an event.
- Agenda: order of business, circulated before the meeting.
- Minutes: record of what was decided, written in the past tense and confirmed at the next meeting.
- Report: findings and recommendations in sections.
Keeping records
Records are kept for legal and tax reasons (books, invoices, the facture normalisée), for control of cash and stock, for credit decisions and for management information. Filing systems: alphabetical, numerical, chronological, geographical, subject; centralised (one registry, standard control) versus departmental (faster access, duplication). Retention periods, secure disposal and data protection matter.
Worked example
A manager must tell 300 factory staff in Douala that shifts change next Monday, and must also confirm a price change to one supplier. The shift change suits a notice on the board plus a circular to supervisors: one message, many receivers, immediate. The price change needs a business letter, because it is contractual, must leave a written record and is personal to that supplier. Using a notice for the price change would be a communication failure.
Traps
- Writing "Yours sincerely" after "Dear Sir".
- Describing minutes as what will be discussed; that is the agenda.
- Forgetting feedback, without which the sender cannot know the message was understood.
- Using a memorandum for external correspondence.