(Corporate) Communication – Bottomless Pit or Structured System?

Patrycja Leinekugel & Tania Diehl | March 4^th, 2025

Have you ever thought about what the phenomenon of ‘communicating’ actually means?

‘You can’t not communicate’ said Paul Watzlawick (1921 - 2007), psychotherapist and communication scientist¹.

Where does communication begin and where does it end? Is it a bottomless pit, or does it have its limits? If we don’t say anything, we still communicate. As the saying goes: ‘No answer is also an answer’. In this way, we express our opinion on a certain topic without saying a single word.

What is Communication and Why do We actually Communicate?

As we all know, communicating means talking to each other. But not only, as we have already learnt from the quote by Paul Watzlawick. In addition to language, gestures, signs and facial expressions, communication also involves our gaze and posture. We can say a lot with our body without saying one single word.

‘Communication is also an exchange of information’, we might all add. But is this truly the case? Yes, but only at first glance. Communication is much more than just asking questions and answering them. Communication is also about listening, reacting, agreeing, experiencing, sharing, coordinating, questioning, doubting, evaluating, looking for solutions, collecting ideas, helping, explaining, passing on information and acting accordingly. This is verbal communication. However, we can also communicate non-verbally when we show our affection or dislike, agreement or disagreement, joy or sadness with gestures or facial expressions.

Communication is an integral part of our private and professional lives, without which we could not exist in society, in the family and at work. It is said for good reason: ‘Communication is the key to success’ or ‘Communication is the foundation of every relationship’.

Some Facts from the Past

Communication has existed since the emergence of human language, i.e. for thousands of years. I imagine the beginning of communication to be very simple: By articulating sounds when you wanted something; shouting when you were afraid or when it was dangerous and you had to defend yourself; smiling when you were happy and crying when you were sad; giving signs and gestures when you liked (hugging) or disliked (pushing away) each other; paintings/drawings on the rocks such as the Lascaux cave in France, which is still very well preserved to this day², when you wanted to tell stories.  This is how cavemen communicated 50,000 years ago. A very simple form of communication, but one that was probably sufficient for the needs of prehistoric man at the time. In today’s communication, we still have a lot in common with these simple and early forms of communication: we communicate to express our needs and feelings (sometimes through inarticulate sounds, like our ancestors in the caves) when we want to share or learn something.

And today ...

Nowadays, we communicate using writing, which originated many thousands of years ago. We communicate in writing on paper and digitally through emails, chats, messengers and social channels without giving it much thought. We take this type of communication for granted, even though it was not a matter of course over 30 years ago. There were and still are other forms of communication: fire or smoke signals, drums, lighthouses, flag signals, troop flags and sign language A new phenomenon of the last 20 years: we write more often than we speak to each other.  Spoken language is increasingly being replaced by digital technologies.

Emojis have become an integral part of modern business and private (written) communication. They could perhaps be seen as a further development of cave paintings. We use emojis to express our emotions, moods and reactions. In other words, exactly what the cavemen wanted to achieve with their murals. The little round faces are everywhere - in chat messages, social media, emails and even interactive platforms (such as the innovaphone Connect App) and sometimes say more than individual words.

What is the Situation in the Professional Field? What Means of Communication are Available?

In many companies, the telephone, e-mails and audio and video conferences are part of everyday life. But modern corporate communication encompasses much more: Apps and tools facilitate efficient, flexible and contemporary working. innovaphone offers numerous solutions for digital communication.
But communication doesn’t just mean informing, it also means being well informed. How does important information or decisions reach all employees in your company? How do they find out about new colleagues? Where can meeting agendas and minutes be shared - in a targeted and clear manner?

If most internal communication continues to take place via email, valuable time is lost. ‘Time is money’, as Benjamin Franklin said in 1748³. In addition to wasting time, work processes are also unnecessarily slowed down. Imagine you are looking for a roll-up after the trade fair - how many emails would it take to find out who has it?

The answer is our Connect App - our social intranet platform for digital collaboration.

I asked our colleague Tania Diehl (innovaphone Business Development) about the Connect App.

Conclusion:

Communication can and should be a structured system that every company can flexibly adapt to the own specific business needs and structures. This system now has a name - innovaphone Connect App. innovaphone provides companies with both a working tool and an entire platform for communication, work and collaboration for employees, teams and departments. How the companies design and work with their own Connect platform is up to them. What is certain is that this app can take corporate communication to an all-new level.

Sources:

¹ https://www.swr.de/swrkultur/wissen/paul-watzlawick-warum-wir-nicht-nicht-kommunizieren-koennen-104.html
² https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6hle_von_Lascaux
³ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Zeit_ist_Geld