How Leaders Can Avoid Communication Traps in Organizations

NCOs Make the Army More Reliable through Effective Communication

It is almost trite to say that Army operations rely on effective communication. But what does that mean for NCOs?

Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe are among the leading scholars in organizational communication. They have studied what they have termed, “highly reliable organizations” (HRO) and have identified five key features consistent with the most reliable ones. Not surprisingly, they conclude, reliability hangs on communication.

NCOs are at the heart of making the Army reliable through everyday communication habits.

“The major determinant of reliability in an organization,” write Weick and Sutcliffe, “is not how greatly it values reliability per se over other organizational values, but rather how greatly it disvalues the mis-specification, mis-estimation, and misunderstanding of things.”

Four NCOs — Master Sgt. Elijah Plante, Sgt.1st Class Lindsey Barth, Staff Sgt. Christopher Spears, and Sgt. Jessica Crisler — exemplify how to avoid mis-specification, mis-estimation, and misunderstanding.

These NCOs represent a variety of military duties, training backgrounds, and experience in the Army. What they have in…