Do you know these self-tests that presumably provide you with a deep personality analysis based on a handful of questions? Well, this is not one of them. But, if you want to know whether to read on or not, take a minute to consider the following statements:

• Significant part of the workplace communication holds me back, distracts me, or keeps me from doing meaningful work.
• Much of my workplace communication can be described as noise.
• Some of the workplace communication I am exposed to creates ambiguity and uncertainty.
• The bottom line is often vague and unidentifiable.
• In many cases, the flow and logic of the discussion are hard to follow.
• Much of the communication is unstructured, spontaneous, and hectic.
• I frequently feel I am about to miss out on something important.
• A typical discussion can become overly emotional or vocal without anyone realizing why.
• I rarely learn something new or gain fresh insights from a typical workplace communication.
• I sometimes feel I am misunderstood when interacting with others.
• If I miss even one day of meetings and emails, I find it challenging to jump back into the discussions.
• I could have skipped quite a few meetings and emails in retrospect without it negatively affecting my work.

If you happened to nod in agreement with at least a few of these statements, you are not alone. Many people across industries and job profiles feel something is just not working when it comes to workplace communication. For the most part, office communication is broken. Instead of helping us work better, it gets in our way. And with the move to a more distributed and remote work environment, things are about to get even worse.

Guess what. We can fix that.