The Engineering Executive's Primer

Chapter 11. Internal Communications

Whenever an executive joins a new company, there is an awkward merger between the executive’s preferred communication style and the norms that the organization has already established. I remember one executive complaining that engineers weren’t reading emails at his new company. He “solved” that problem by sending another email, this one instructing the team that they were responsible for reading their email twice a day. You won’t be shocked to learn that this didn’t really solve the problem.

This chapter covers five practices that will significantly improve the quality of your organization’s internal communication:

Maintain the drip

Communicate on a regular basis, even if you don’t have something novel to share.

Test before broadcasting

Review your communication with a few people before sending it, to improve clarity and avoid blind spots.

Build the packet

Ensure every communication has a concise summary, and link to background context and an explicit way to ask questions.

Keep it short

Edit messages for brevity.

Use every channel

Distribute important information across every relevant channel, including meetings, email, chat, and so on.

Importantly, these are all mechanical practices. Even if internal communications is something you’ve struggled with in the past, there are no prerequisites to adopting these tools. They don’t require unique literary flair, charismatic public speaking skills, or anything extraordinary beyond the willingness ...