The organisations with genuinely good communication don't have better communication training - they have better communication systems.
They have clear processes for making decisions, so people know what information is needed and who needs to provide it. They measure and reward collaboration, not just individual performance. They create psychological safety by protecting people who raise difficult issues in good faith.
Most importantly, they model good communication from the top down. When leadership consistently demonstrates honest, direct, constructive communication - even when it's uncomfortable - that behaviour cascades through the organisation.
I worked with a Perth mining company that transformed their communication culture without a single workshop or training session. They simply implemented three changes:
All meetings had to have a clear decision-maker identified upfront. Anyone could raise concerns or opposing views without fear of retaliation, but the decision-maker had final authority. And every major decision had to be communicated back to affected teams within 48 hours with clear reasoning.
That's it. No personality assessments, no active listening training, no conflict resolution workshops. Just clear systems that made good communication necessary and poor communication obvious.
Their project delivery times improved by 40% within six months because people stopped wasting time on endless discussions and started having focused conversations about actual decisions.
Real communication improvement happens when organisations start having the conversations they've been avoiding, not when individuals learn better conversation techniques.
Conversations about workload distribution that acknowledge some people are carrying more weight than others. Conversations about performance expectations that set clear standards instead of vague aspirations. Conversations about decision-making authority that eliminate the confusion about who's actually responsible for what.
These conversations are uncomfortable because they expose problems that everyone knows exist but nobody wants to address directly. They require acknowledging that some people aren't pulling their weight, some processes aren't working, and some decisions have been made for political rather than practical reasons.
But they're the conversations that actually improve how an organisation functions. Everything else is just social lubrication.
The conflict resolution skills that matter most aren't about managing interpersonal friction - they're about addressing systemic issues that create unnecessary conflict in the first place.
Here's the uncomfortable truth about the communication training industry: it's much easier to sell workshops on personality types and active listening than it is to help organisations fix their broken systems.
Individual skill development feels actionable and non-threatening. Systems change is complex, political, and potentially disruptive. Training companies would rather run workshops that make people feel good about their communication abilities than tackle the organisational issues that actually drive communication problems.
It's also more profitable. You can sell the same communication workshop to hundreds of companies because the content is generic. But helping an organisation fix its specific communication systems requires custom work, deeper expertise, and longer engagements.
Most training budgets go toward feel-good solutions that don't threaten the status quo, rather than diagnostic work that might reveal inconvenient truths about how the organisation actually operates.
Stop sending people to generic communication workshops and start examining the systems that shape how communication happens in your organisation.
Look at your meeting structures. Do they facilitate actual decision-making or just information sharing? Are the right people in the room with the right authority to act on what's discussed?
Examine your measurement and reward systems. Are people incentivised to collaborate and share information, or are they rewarded for individual performance regardless of how they achieve it?
Create clear decision-making processes so people know what information is needed, who needs to provide it, and how decisions will be made. This eliminates 80% of communication confusion right there.
Most importantly, address the communication problems that everyone knows exist but nobody talks about. The manager who dominates every conversation. The department that never responds to requests for information. The decision-making process that seems to change depending on who's involved.
These aren't skills problems that can be solved through training. They're behaviour problems that require direct intervention and clear consequences.