Is technology reducing our reliance on line managers?

Here's one to set the cat amongst the pigeons...

US blogger Bernie Charland, a senior communication strategist at PC manufacturer Dell, has challenged one of the sacred cows of internal comms by suggesting that developments in technology - RSS, wikis, social networking, video conferencing, intranets and so on - are reducing the importance of line manager communication. Check out his post here.

He is clearly playing devil's advocate, but his point is a good one and it's great to see someone challenging the conventional wisdom for a change.

Charland sets out his logic clearly, and on the face of it it's pretty compelling stuff.  I buy his argument that today many employees can access critical information much more easily, both inside and outside the organization. If they want to that is. Social media is, as we have discussed before, blurring the line between internal and external communication. This means that if they have the appetite stakeholders, whoever and wherever they are, can easily become much more knowledgeable.

The problem, as Charland rightly points out, is that use of these tools are in no way universal. Employees in hi tech and knowledge-based companies like Dell may well utilize the latest communication technologies, but they are still alien to the vast majority of workers (perhaps even more so here in Europe). Factories, call centers and the like are just the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, I would argue that outside big business, most employers don't even have the basics in place yet (one of which is effective line manager comms).   

Charland acknowledges that managers are still important and I completely agree. For me, there will always be a need for line managers to have meaningful conversations with their people, to show they care about employees, to really listen, to provide context for corporate decisions, to motivate and to inspire. At its best Web 2.0 technology certainly enhances workplace communication, but, fan as I am, I honestly can't see it ever replacing traditional face-to-face comms.

That's my view, but I'd love to know what others think (and I'd really love to know what the likes of T J Larkin, Roger D'Aprix or Angela Sinickas - communicators who have done so much to underline the importance of line manager comms - have to say on the subject). 

Comments

[Bernie Charland]

Lee,
Glad to see my blog post got picked up and is sparking some thinking - and hopefully lively discussion. Since I've written the post I've amended my opinion every so slightly. I still stand by my previous comments, but believe managers may become even more important not as communicators per se but as people managers and cultural ambassadors. And that's a much more challenging task to arm them for than just cascading the key communication highlights, I would argue.
By the way - I'm Canadian, so we're Commonwealth partners.
Cheers

[David Kippen]

Lee,

I just had the opportunity to co-present with Bernie at a Conference Board event last week and, while it's a little off topic, thought it would be useful to add that everyone in the audience really seemed to struggle to get their arms around how to change strategy in response to this technology-based shift in communications. Bottom line, and I'm stealing a bit of Bernie's thunder here but trust he won't mind, the new paradigm seems to be more like "conversation management" then "content management." Simply put, at the exact same time as more and more technology-enabled forms of conversation are emerging, the field of communications is being challenged to move beyond saying "on message" to staying "on brand." A tough challenge. May we all live in interesting times.