Forty loaves that never came: On Thursday a café asks Kofi, the Market Square manager, for 40 extra sourdough loaves on Saturday. The loaves never arrive.
How the order got lost
Thursday afternoon
Kofi adds a line to the order he emails to Mill Lane every afternoon: 'SD x40 Sat MS'.
The eleventh email
It is the eleventh email Priti gets that day, and the line sits at the bottom, under the usual order.
2 a.m.
The night shift starts, bakes from the usual list, and nobody reads that far.
Saturday
The café has no bread, and Lena's Bakery has lost $120 of sales and a customer.
Every message makes the same journey. Someone has something to say (the sender). They put it into words, numbers or pictures (the message) and send it by some method (the medium): a conversation, a note, an email, a phone call. Someone gets it (the receiver). And, if it works, the receiver shows they have understood (feedback).
Sender
who has something to say
- Kofi, the Market Square manager
Message
what has to be understood
- 40 extra sourdough loaves for the café, Saturday
- Written as 'SD x40 Sat MS'
Medium
how it travels
- One line at the bottom of the afternoon order email
Receiver
who has to act on it
- Priti and the night shift at Mill Lane
Feedback
proof it was understood
- None: nobody replied, so Kofi thought all was well
Barrier to communication: A barrier to communication is anything that stops a message from reaching the receiver, from being understood, or from being acted on in the way the sender meant.
Kofi's message did reach Mill Lane. It failed further along: it was buried among too many other messages, it was written in shorthand only Kofi could be sure of, and nobody was asked to confirm it. A barrier can strike at any step of the journey, and one message can meet several.
Why barriers matter to a business
- Mistakes and waste. The wrong goods are made, or none at all: 40 loaves at $3 is $120 the café never paid.
- Slower work. Staff wait for answers, ask twice, or do the job again.
- Frustration and lower motivation. People blamed for a message they never understood stop trusting the people who send them.
- Damaged relationships. A customer or supplier let down by a misunderstanding may not come back.
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Nadia joined Jonas's Park Road shop last week and spends a night at Mill Lane to learn the bread.
Over the noise of the mixers, Priti tells her that the rye 'has a long retard and a hot bake, so it keeps'. Nadia nods. The next morning a customer asks why the rye lasts longer than the white loaf, and Nadia has no idea.
The method was fine: Nothing was wrong with the method: Priti spoke to Nadia face to face. The barriers were between the two people.
Four barriers between people
Words the receiver does not share
Specialist words a group uses among itself (jargon), or a language the receiver does not speak well. 'A long retard' means a slow, cold rise overnight to Priti; to Nadia it means nothing.
Feelings and trust
Fear, stress, anger or mistrust change what people say and how they hear it. Rosa once shaped a batch that did not rise and said nothing, because she expected to be blamed. Priti found out from a complaint two days later.
Noise and the place
Anything around the message that drowns it out or distracts from it. At Mill Lane the mixers and the extractor fans run all night, so instructions shouted across the bakehouse arrive half-heard.
Too much at once
More messages than anyone can read and sort (information overload). Lena's fourteen-point Monday email reaches all 22 staff; the one point that matters to the bakers is number eleven.
Name it, then show the damage: 'Language' on its own is only a label. Say what the barrier did to the message: Nadia could not explain the rye to a customer, so she guessed, and the customer was given the wrong reason.
The same goes for every barrier. What was lost, late, changed or misunderstood because of it?
Differences between the people themselves can be a barrier too. Priti's older bakers talk things through at the start of the shift; the younger counter staff post in a group chat the bakers never open. Age, background and experience shape how people like to send and receive messages (demographic differences), so a message sent the way one group likes can miss the other completely.
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A label change at Goldcrust: Goldcrust's head office changes the recipe of its seeded loaf: it now contains sesame.
The message goes from the chief executive to the regional directors, the area managers, the bakery managers, the shift supervisors and finally the counter staff. Six levels.
What reaches the counter: Each level passes on a shorter version. By the time it reaches a small-town counter it has become 'new seeded loaf from Monday', and a counter assistant tells a customer with a sesame allergy that the loaf is safe.
Some barriers are not about the people at all. They come from how the business is organized, and they catch every message that travels through it. Goldcrust's six levels of hierarchy are six chances for a message to be shortened, delayed or changed. In Lena's Bakery Ltd, with three levels, a message from Lena reaches a counter assistant in two steps.
| Barrier built into the business | Where it shows | What goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Too many levels | Goldcrust: six levels between the chief executive and the counter | The message is cut, delayed or changed at each level on the way down |
| The wrong method | Lena pins the new Sunday opening hours on the Mill Lane noticeboard | The counter staff, who never go to Mill Lane, never see it |
| Shifts and places that never meet | The bakers work from 2 a.m.; the counter staff start at 7 a.m. in three other buildings | A complaint about the bread reaches the bakers a day late, second-hand |
| Unclear channels | A shop manager does not know whether a problem with the bread goes to Priti or to Lena | The message goes to the wrong person, or to nobody |
| Systems that do not match | Kofi emails his order, Aisha phones hers and Jonas texts his | Mill Lane has three places to look, and one order gets missed |
Bad news travels up worst: Messages going up the levels are changed as well as those coming down. A shift supervisor who has to report a mistake to an area manager tends to soften it, and the area manager softens it again for the regional director.
More than slow: So a tall structure does more than slow a message down. By the time a problem reaches the top it can look much smaller than it is.
Choosing the method is part of the message. A noticeboard, an email or a word at the start of a shift can each work well. But if the receiver does not see it in time, cannot read it, or cannot ask a question about it, the method itself has become the barrier.
The oven that would not steam: Lena's Bakery buys a new stone-deck oven for Mill Lane from Ovenhaus, a maker in another country. From the first night the steam setting fails, and the crusts come out dull.
Why the fix takes so long
- Language. Priti deals with Ovenhaus's engineer, Dario. Each speaks only a little of the other's language, and their calls go worst on the technical settings.
- Time. Ovenhaus's office opens at 4 p.m. Mill Lane time, when Priti is asleep before her 2 a.m. shift.
- Result. After three weeks the oven still does not steam.
Language
- No language both people speak well
- Worst on technical details: temperatures, steam, timings
- Priti and Dario agree a fix that each understood differently
Distance and time zones
- The two offices are open at different hours
- Calls are hard to arrange, so problems wait for days
- Dario cannot come and look at the oven himself
Culture
- Different ideas of what is polite or how direct to be
- Dario's 'we will look into it' meant no; Priti heard yes
- Each side thinks the other is being unhelpful
Systems that do not match
- Ovenhaus answers through its own online portal
- Priti uses email and the phone, so replies sit unread
- Each side thinks the other has gone quiet
These barriers appear whenever two organizations have to work as one: a business and its supplier abroad, two firms in a partnership, or one business that has taken over another. After a takeover the list often grows. The two sets of staff may be used to different leadership styles and a different number of levels, their systems do not talk to each other, and the staff of the business that was bought may not yet trust the new owners.
Between whom?: When a question names two businesses, the barrier has to sit between them. 'The mixers are noisy' is a barrier inside Mill Lane, not between Lena's Bakery and Ovenhaus.
Use what the case tells you about both sides: who speaks which language, where each one is, how each one is run and what went wrong because of it.
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How this comes up: On the case study: explain two barriers to communication between two named organizations, a business and its supplier abroad, or a business and one it has taken over.
What to expect
- Four marks: two for each barrier.
- Six marks: three for each barrier.
- The case holds the clues: a line about languages, time zones, a takeover, different leadership styles or a tall structure.
- Each barrier you choose should be one the case points to.
The pattern for each barrier
- Name the barrier. A precise one: language, time zones, too many levels, systems that do not match, mistrust. Not 'poor communication'.
- Say what it does to the message. Lost, late, changed or misunderstood, and why.
- Show it in the case. A name, a number or a line from the case, for both organizations.
- For six marks, go one step further. What the damaged message led to: late orders, mistakes, frustrated staff, lost customers.
- Then a second, different barrier. Two barriers that break the message in different ways.
Two traps: The same barrier twice. 'They speak different languages' and 'they use different words' are one barrier said twice. Pick a second one that works differently: time zones, levels, trust.
A barrier with no case. 'Different time zones make calls difficult' is true of any two firms. Say whose time zones, and what was not sorted out because of them.
Explain two possible barriers to communication between Goldcrust and Café Lune after the takeover.
Model answer plan
See the answer broken into clear points, with guidance on how each point earns marks.