The Basic Communication Model

The model follows a message from one person to another:

1. Sender: the person or group with an idea to share, such as a project sponsor.
2. Encoding: turning the idea into words, images or symbols.
3. Message: the encoded content itself.
4. Channel: the medium that carries it: a meeting, an email, a video, an intranet page.
5. Decoding: the receiver interpreting the message, through their own knowledge and assumptions.
6. Receiver: the person or group the message is meant for.
7. Noise: anything that distorts or interferes with the message between sender and receiver.
8. Feedback: the receiver's response, which shows the sender how the message was understood.

The basic communication model therefore shows that sending a message is only the first half of communicating.

Claude Shannon, an engineer at Bell Laboratories, published a mathematical theory of communication in 1948. In 1949 it appeared as a book with an introductory essay by Warren Weaver. Shannon's model described an information source, a transmitter, a channel, a receiver, a destination and a noise source. It was designed for telephone and radio signals, and it ran in one direction only.

Wilbur Schramm adapted these ideas to human communication in 1954. He described people as encoders and decoders of meaning, stressed that understanding depends on the experience sender and receiver share, and drew communication as a loop in which the receiver responds.

The basic communication model used in change management is therefore a simplified blend of an engineering model and a human one.

In change, noise is rarely a bad phone line. It is usually one of these:

• Physical: a briefing held in a noisy depot, or a message lost in a crowded inbox.
• Semantic: jargon, acronyms or project terms that mean nothing to the receiver.
• Psychological: fear, distrust or rumors that shape how the message is decoded.
• Competing messages: other changes and business-as-usual announcements arriving at the same time.

At Harbourside Council, an email titled "Target operating model, phase 2" tells front-line staff their office will move. Many read it as a job-loss warning, because the jargon is unclear and rumors are already circulating.

Noise in the basic communication model therefore includes the receiver's own assumptions, not only external interference.

Without feedback, communication is one-way: the sender knows what was sent but not what was understood. Feedback closes the loop. It lets the sender check how the message was decoded and correct misunderstandings before they spread.

Feedback does not remove noise. It reveals where noise has distorted the message, so the sender can respond: rephrase, change channel or address the fear behind a question.

In change, feedback comes from questions in briefings, pulse surveys, conversations with line managers and change agents, and from what people actually do. At Harbourside Council, a short question-and-answer session after the email would have exposed the job-loss reading within a day.

The basic communication model therefore treats feedback as part of communication, not as an optional extra.

The model is a useful checklist, but it simplifies a lot. It presents communication as transmission, as if meaning were packed by the sender and unpacked by the receiver. In practice, meaning is built by both sides, shaped by relationships, power and the organization's history.

It also follows one message between two parties, while change communication is a web of conversations, informal networks and repeated messages over months.

Used with these limits in mind, the basic communication model remains a quick way to locate where a message went wrong.