Passion, Fun and Vision, they say are the vital ingredients of a successful company, irrespective of its stage in a business life cycle. One of the most important things that these 3 depend on is Communication levels in a company. Tomes have been written on how to effectively communicate, how to see to it that all the employees in a company use tools to communicate among each other, collaborate, voice out their opinions. However, if one looks at most the companies, the communication techniques are rather dull and boring, and inevitable they do not give the grass root feedback that is needed for everybody Lets look at communication from 3 aspects . Firstly, generic communication levels among all departments of a company. Secondly, communication inside a team and thirdly inter personal relation ships A company’s values are shaped by communication mechanisms. In fact a large part of culture of a company is shaped by how effectively people exchange information. Sadly most of the companies merely do a lip service to it. Lets take an example from a company, which I adore for some specific reasons - The Body Shop run by Anita Roddick . Its a firm which is in to cosmetics business and which has grown from a small outfit to a gigantic organization. Anita Roddick uses a simple but very very effective means to get grass root feedback. Imagine, one place where almost every employee visits atleast once a day Toilet - If one looks at the history of toilets, generally, people freak out on the walls…Why not turn this problem in to an opportunity. She put a electronic graffiti board which took feedback from all its employees. The type of feedback she received helped her take a lot of effective decisions. Such creative ideas should be used by one and all to know the pulse of the company and sort out issues if there are any. Apart from these techniques which are used across organization, there are also some simple but very effective to keep the communication free in a team. Do you know that human touch is a great tool for effective communication? In my little work experience I had, I really did not give a great importance to this aspect. But increasingly this simple aspect of touching some person while talking to him is certainly helping me put across my point better, when working in a small team.When was the last time you touched some person while talking to him/her? Go ahead and try it out for yourself Thirdly , the interpersonal communications. Ricardo Semler believes that there is no need to have any restraint on the language that can be used in a company.He feels that one cannot police on the employees vocab and the eco system will itself become one where diverse vacabs merge in to a culture unique to the company. Vineet Bajpai , one of the successful entrepreneurs thinks that language among employees need to be restrained, as in all probability they might use the same language with one of the supplier, vendor, customer or some external entity and that might reflect badly on the company. As you would have seen , this interpersonal communication is not a straight forward thing to deal with. Probably I will figure out this issue myself in the days to come whether restraint on the vocabulary of the employees plays any role . All in all, the role of communications in a company is a crucial element for its sustainability. what about the element of external communications..! Thoughts on it