“That's all right, Randy. He won't get far. He doesn't know you're supposed to put your foot over the hole in the floor to keep the exhaust out.” – My Name is Earl

In another installment of what business could learn from the military I have something simple for you that every battle captain…that is an officer monitoring and helping to coordinate what is going on with units in the field should be asking themselves…and as a leader in business you should be doing and teaching your team members to be doing and that is asking three questions:

1) What do I know?

2) Who needs to know?

3) Who have I told?

Business is a challenge even if you do everything right, but it seems like often the simple things are the hardest to do. I’ve seen, and experienced, it when team members are failing to do important things for the teams success…..BECAUSE NO ONE EVER TOLD THEM.

When you experience communication problems, start with these three questions before you look elsewhere…they are easy to ask, easy to fix AND cover a large portion of the communication challenges in many organizations.