2 Discussion Responses

Reply to the two posts below SEPARATELY (3 citations per response)
Use the 2 sources attached
In your responses, look at their analyses and determine if their reasoning is sound or not and why.
Post #1
Upon reflection of my professional career, one contributor towards a failed communication attempt would be the “withholding of information” (Vaughan, 2012). I work for a privately owned company, and after having worked with the CEO for a short period of time in our corporate office, alongside some of the top executive members of the company, it would eventually become apparent to me that the CEO was very particular about certain information being made accessible to others in the company. Though fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to work with them, at the time of my tenure with the company, I was still at an associate level, and much younger and more timid in personality. When I was tasked with a project with collecting information to present to our CEO, I had consulted other members of other departments for help in gathering the information. When approached for help though, the members of the other departments were reluctant to share, and gave me the runaround as to why they could not access them. Some people were vague about it, and said that they were having “technical difficulties”, and others were more upfront, stating that they would need permission first before sharing.
At first, I had just presumed that this was standard protocol, but upon further inquiring, I learned that each department head and manager was instructed that any information (pertaining to the matter of which I was working on) was privileged information, and would require permission from essentially the CEO himself. Needless to say, I found this to be very odd, as it was the CEO himself that delegated and assigned my team the project. Eventually, the project assigned to my team was re-tasked to another group, and we were reassigned to another task.
To this day, I was never given an explanation as to why that particular information was so sensitive. In any case, the hindrance in the communication that I experienced during this ordeal definitely contributed to the problems I had faced when trying to accomplish my task, which lends itself to say that if communication lines were more open and transparent, situations like the one I had encountered years ago with our CEO could have been avoided all together.
Works Cited:
Vaughan, David. (January 2012). The Top 5 Reasons Communications Fail. Website. https://www.tmcnet.com/topics/articles/253113-top-five-reasons-communications-fail.htm
Post #2
Vaughan’s (2012) article regarding communication fails is definitely relatable to anyone who transitioned to a remote-based job. The “fail” that stood out the most to me focused on overly complex messages.
I was working as a phone agent at a call center when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Over 1500 call center agents had to transition from in-office to a work-at-home setup within the course of a single week. Because our position requires the handling of payment information and other sensitive customer information, we couldn’t just connect our computers to our wifi and work. Instead, our equipment had to be hard-wired to an ethernet connection, implementing the use of an “Aruba device” that transfored our own personal WIFI into a secure Disney connection. The Aruba device made the process rather confusing, as it involved multiple ethernet cables going into different ports on the wifi router, computer, and Aruba device. All agents were sent home with a printout that contained step-by-step instructions on how to get the process done. The process was complex, even for someone that may consider themselves tech-savvy.
The communication was a failed communication because it was hastily written, and was extremely complicated to understand. Had the communications team included photos of each step (showing where each cable went), or even a link to a video that showed the installation process, agents would have likely had an easier time installing the Aruba device in their homes.
References
Vaughan, D. (2012, January 9). The top five reasons communications fail. TMCNET. Retrieved from The Top Five Reasons Communications Fail (tmcnet.com)