Communication 101

By Ari Suro

Why Facebook is so famous?

Why Cars has lights and monitor decks ?

Why Roads has traffic signs?

1. Its all boil down to communication, as such it enable us to understand in responding to an event. so why communication is the basic form of soft infrastructure and is often undervalued over engineering, science & finance and many disciplines.

2. Silicon Valley & the rise of internet economy. Silicon Valley grew during world war 2 thanks to United States interest in building spy intelligence tools against the soviet. Rand Corporation, Stanford university gave birth to Internet Giant Companies such as Intel & other Military Industrial Complex. Electronic Circuits, Semiconductor are basic equipment to take any measures or precaution against their enemy. In short Silicon Valley was needed in creating communication tool that understand how the soviets will react during the cold war.

3. I’m not here to discuss the world war 2 but to explain how the biggest and the most powerful United States military industrial complex and Silicon Valley place Communication & Information as the fundamental that gave birth to science & engineering,so how can we adopt the value of communication in Corporate Indonesia to enable growth ?

4. Indonesia’s culture of low profile and stay in harmony. Unfortunately communication is not seen as an investment tool here, wed rather consume and white labelling Chinese “handphone” to create a short term investment. Indonesian still sees communication as basic human function not as investment or commodity.

5. The adopted culture of being humble is greatly misunderstood, staying quiet is often used and abused. In my opinion Orde baru greatest gift to Indonesia is the “Javanisation” of culture where Javanese were seem to be the right methodology of Leadership. If such culture is embraced over centuries ago, why is our civilization is lagging behind ? how can the adoption of new javanese culture be translated and keeping abreast in today democracy.

6. BUMN Indonesia’s largest Corporation. SOE still plays a key role in our economy, covering most sector from energy, agriculture to technology. The communication style in BUMN may varies it values harmony over more than anything else, often is top down. Im not a proponent of harmony and top down approach, history of corporate growth is without trial and tribulations and so is civilization.

7. The right question is does SOE convey the right mantra emphasizing on welfare over profit and what would be the right communication approach that would be the perfect fit for large state owned entreprise ?

8. The rise of new corporation built with Millennials. Nadim Makariem is one of Indonesian Entrepreneurs that values communication & information. Open Culture & Transparent is key to Gojek success.

9. Being transparent do not mean letting everything out in a table, is just give a sense of direction to inspire others, after all isnt that what CEO supposed to do

Originally published at https://datascience.or.id