A Playbook for Effective Internal Executive Communications

Regardless of the size of the organization, the industry it operates within, or the forces (inside and out) exerting pressure upon it, communication from leadership to employees plays a critical role in designing for and realizing the future everyone within the org is collectively working towards.

Absent an effective internal comms strategy with a clear narrative and regular, meaningful insight into progress toward defined goals, employees are left to search for meaning, intention, and causation on their own.

If leadership doesn’t shape a narrative built on the realities the organization faces in the marketplace — good and bad — one is created for them in that void. And that narrative may be built upon partial truths, incomplete context, or misdirected cognitive leaps. Left unaddressed, this can create a vicious cycle of misunderstanding, misalignment, disengagement, and diminished output.

Over the last 10+ years at various levels of seniority within companies that have enjoyed or endured times of prosperity and paucity in equal measure, I’ve learned a few lessons (some of them the hard way) about effective internal executive communications. What follows is a WIP playbook for a consistent, practical, and useful executive comms approach that is designed to foster improved understanding, alignment, engagement, and output.

Host a Recurring All-Hands, and Make it Matter

Give results context beyond the hard number

• Articulate which metrics matter, and report with simplicity and clarity the org’s progress against those metrics. Seems simple, but many (non-public) organizations guard too closely the metrics that reveal the health of the business in an effort to smooth out the short-term ups and downs every company faces throughout its lifecycle. This is especially common when times are tough, and while likely noble in its aim, it is often a damaging miscalculation that stokes confusion and diffuses responsibility and ownership of organizational outcomes
• Share the critically important nuance and assign or reject causality if a highly visible number goes up or down (revenue, headcount, profitability, stock price, forecasts, users, traffic, etc.) — and don’t run from the red numbers when they show up
• When employees at all levels have this context, they’re better equipped to frame the perspective of their daily work against the broader organizational performance and align their personal / team / department goals against this bigger picture

Repeat repeat repeat the vision for the company and the plan to realize it

• Very few people outside the board rooms/executive committee meetings have the repeated exposure to how long-term strategy is being addressed from top to bottom, especially in the context of the above sample metrics
• Articulate and reinforce the highest level messaging of where the organization wants to be (results), how it’s going to get there (plan), and the way it wants to get there (culture/habits/mentality)
• Absent this defined gameplan and framework, it is nearly impossible for employees to connect their own work product and results to the company’s past and current performance, let alone optimize their individual / team / department goals, behaviors, and outcomes in a way that aligns with those of the broader org

Don’t keep secrets

• This varies by organization, but in every company, some percentage of employees are just going about executing their daily tasks and have limited direct responsibility for or direct impact on some of the highest-order metrics (revenue, profitability, etc.) impacting the near- and long-term viability of their employer. But they see and feel the trickle-down impact of changes in those metrics, either directly or indirectly
• When they don’t have context to why, or when negative outcomes are swept under the rug, they create their own narratives and they share those thoughts with others. Momentum around a narrative spreads — fast — and either energizes or infects every aspect of work
• Be as transparent about the bad as you are about the good, and meet every “revelation” or confrontation of reality with context, a concrete plan, and clear expectations for what happens next

Designing an Effective Recurring All-Hands

Be concise

• There’s lot of stuff that can be said. Only say the stuff that truly matters in the context of the above, and be ruthless in your prioritization
• If your org lives or dies on customer churn, margin on recurring revenue, timely deployment of the product roadmap, category share, etc., put those metrics front and center and orient your plan around them. (This doesn’t confine you to a local maxima or prevent you from investing in non-core growth initiatives or moonshots that create new longer-term win/loss scenarios — it does the exact opposite. It empowers you and every employee to build and work within a system that facilitates growth within and outside the core)
• Signaling this focus and discipline breeds a productive and empowered mentality that spreads like wildfire. Naturally, the absence of this focus breeds a subtle chaos that isn’t always immediately visible in the near-term, but is undeniably evident over time

Exercise hyper-simplicity of narrative

• Repeat, repeat, repeat and rally around the simple vision that stated what the organization does best, how that’s valued (the right thing for our customers) and valuable ($$$) so the company can keep thriving/return to growth

Identify a crystal clear enemy

• Explicitly define a market force, technical limitation, competitive factor, customer behavior, organizational habit, etc. that is getting in the way of achieving the articulated vision, including how to identify it and how to address it when employees at all levels see it — tactically and systematically

Celebrate the clearest examples of the best of what the org is trying to achieve:

• Don’t just celebrate any good thing, but celebrate and publicly reward the things that are most directly representative of the behavior, attitude, work product, and outcome that is needed to achieve the articulated vision
• This doesn’t prevent you from celebrating and rewarding behaviors, attitudes, work product, and outcomes that are tangentially or directionally beneficial in realizing the company’s vision, but don’t at face value directly drive revenue, reduce churn, or accelerate deployment. It simply gives an opportunity to connect the dots with additional framing for how those factors all contribute to growth

Cut the BS — especially in the hardest times

• Don’t deflect concern or offer platitudes in response to real, visible, immediate challenges. Employees will sniff this out in a heartbeat, even if they don’t tell you they spot it (yes, even if you ask them directly)
• A culture of communication that glosses over the tough stuff breeds distrust and fear (“If they’re not telling us this, what else are they keeping from us?”)
• Morale is a fickle beast, but assuming employees can’t handle, process, or respond to challenging circumstances cuts off potential problem solving and breakthrough thinking before it ever has a chance to see the light of day, let alone its results be realized. Every employee is there for a reason, and they should be trusted to handle good and bad with maturity and pragmatism

Aggressively reject time wasting

• If the organization or its execs aren’t prepared to discuss the above with the clarity, transparency, and nuance required to make these updates effective and useful, don’t hold the meeting or send the update. Done properly, these comms have incredible value, and preserving that value demands intentional effort. Any meaningful deviation from consistent value offered by them — especially at the outset — devalues the entire series and the effort will fail over time

A few tactical things

• Define the intention and value of these executive comms initiatives upfront and reiterate them until they become widely known, understood, embedded, and embraced throughout the organization
• Be prepared and take the responsibility of the meetings/updates seriously — no flying by the seat of the pants/off the cuff rambling. (This doesn’t mean you can’t go “off-script” if a question or comment warrants it; it means you say what you came to say, and you listen and respond to the input or inquiry offered. Stay on track, refocus where necessary, and situate things that may be “off topic” in the broader context of the update where appropriate. If a discussion doesn’t belong in that setting, make a plan to address it elsewhere and follow through)
• Some seemingly silly but important stuff: make sure the slides, the mics, the stream, etc. work, make sure the room is set up properly and that the meeting starts and ends on time — little ticky-tack things can’t get in the way of the utility and value of the meeting
• Keep a defined time for employee Q&A — and make sure everyone knows that no question is off-limits. This has to be repeatedly lived to be fully realized; it can’t just be something that is said at the outset but not adhered to in practice. There will be uncomfortable, hard, sticky, complex conversations. That’s the point. That’s where understanding, clarity, and growth come from.

There’s no perfect playbook. Every organization has its own norms and culture around communication and ownership, and this by no means encompasses every scenario. But the nuggets above are a start. And they’re on paper. That’s the critical first step for creating a culture and practice of clarity, accountability, and ownership for execs and employees alike.