MIS & Communication Skills

It is a well known fact that communication is the most important part of human life. Good communication skills are required in about every aspect of life to understand others and let other understood us. Persons having good communication skills are well understood by other. Good communication skills are appreciated in every society. Often, hiring companies and institutes partly judge the skills and qualification by just reading one's resume which proves one's written communication skills. The 21st century is the era of communication technology. In this age of communication and fast moving global environment a person is allocated a little time to introduce himself and make the concerned person realize the potential and importance in very short time slot. This kind of time starved situations suggests to the professional to get good command of communication skills, written, verbal and both to be recognized as a good communicator. In my opinion the personality of a person constitutes of about 80% of his communication skills in which general manners are already included. A good communicator will always use an excellent and precise way to make the others round his ideas.

After realizing the importance of communication in everyday life, we move to next step which is its use in Management Information System (M.I.S). M.I.S is a vital part of any organization. We have already discussed that the good communication skills are necessary within as well as outside the organization to communicate more effectively.

Communication whether internal or external, if used in proper manner, turns into the driving force of any organization. The employees within the firm have to communicate each other and they use either Horizontal or Vertical communication. For both types they are required to make proper use of their skills.

For instance, people in an organization at different levels communicate in different tones among each other, especially when it comes to granting responsibilities and distribution of work. For example, a boss would use a different tone in order to communicate with his employees. This mode of communication is called Vertical or Downward flow of communication. Similarly, the same boss will use a different tone when communicating with his colleagues at the same level. This mode of communication is called Horizontal Communication. However, with communication come the moral values, for instance in every culture there are some norms and taboos. When communicating, one is expected to keep the cultural and moral values in sight. This careful considerations in communication helps avoid offending people. This is another major issue but we will not discuss it here.

There is a lot of written communication that takes place in an organization. This inspires people to improve their written communication skills regardless of whether this communication takes place and stored in electronic form or in written records, e.g. report, memo and official letters. Furthermore, for advertisement and in order to open a communication channel to communicate with other organizations, organization needs people with good communication skills.

While implementing an Information System (IS), management becomes the key issue. For management, communication is the key issue. The personnel in M.I.S. are required to gather information to analyze the system of interest in order to design a smart information system. They have to conduct meetings with the concerned people and staff to gather initial facts and figures. These facts and figures help to understand the system behavior and achieve desired goals. Responsible people analyze these facts and figures; finally they set milestones and implement information system. In this cycle one can easily understand the importance of communication skills. The system analyst has to make reports and deliverable, conduct meetings, and write meeting minutes and agenda. He is required to sketch information flow diagrams. Not only system analyst and software engineers but also all the stake holders in M.I.S use their communication skills, such as verbal, written, electronic and group communication. It seldom happens that the Communication Skills of a person improves and builds up as time goes by through his experience while working in different scenarios. For this purpose, one is required to develop those required skills to improve the quality of work. In the end, I would like to summarize my view point by saying that communication skill is the weapon of an educated person that helps one create a space for oneself in the global market. Further more, a company can reach its destination through team work and determination but effective business communication helps organization reach its goal professionally and easily.