The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw
We live in the information and communication age where technology plays as the big mediator. Nevertheless, many people sees technology as a filter. Information is not always ‘processed data’ and it does not produce knowledge. And communication does not produce shared knowledge and awareness.
We care for (and care about) the Digital Divide. But who does care for (and care about) the Human Divide?
We can manage the largest amount of data and we have the best ever technologies, though we are not able to communicate effectively with our interlocutors, whether he is a colleague, a client or a consultant. We may be part of the same team, yet still feel that we are taking opposite directions. We may have agreed on goals and results, yet at the very end we might find out that someone misunderstood or that someone else is not satisfied with the achievements. And if the someone is your customer, this is a serious issue…
It’s clear – there’s an elephant in the room – that the gap lies in the relationships between people who are supposed to collaborate and joint efforts on a project or activity. We need to bring the social capital and people in the centre, we need to focus on relationships’ quality.
More consultants or more results?
Organisations work in a demanding context which requires a high number of skills. As specialisations increase, so the distance between people does. The Human Divide can widen whenever professionals from different organisations are required to collaborate, when an organisation calls in external consultants for a service or when organisations which have different missions (i.e., SMEs, Public Bodies and ONGs…) are called to work together for a shared project. Yet, the sum of several and different competencies does not necessarily leads to the best results. We should consider and care about the Human Divide.
Our approach
To face and solve the Human Divide we imagined 10 paths (our services) that can be followed and undertaken during the critical moments of an organisation’s life or during the development of specific projects.
We address team leader, consultants, professionals and practices that offer goods and services and who want to get in tune with clients, Public Body’s managers, research groups, teachers, self-managed groups, organisations’ managers to overcome the Human Divide anytime the goal of a meeting is sharing and communicating.
To increase the awareness of the importance of relational factors, we introduced the idea of Wellness for Organisations and we imagined a set of self-diagnostic tests to encourage the reflection, through a ‘serious’ game, on the organisational dynamics we all experience.
B4bricks.org 