A perspective on internal communications

As your career progresses and you move up the corporate hierarchy, I think you naturally gain more exposure to decision making and strategy setting processes. It is likely that you become part of those processes yourself. As a result, you have a much greater understanding of the forces shaping your industry and business, and feel a greater sense of control over larger areas of your organisation.

It's easy to forget, when that happens, what it feels like to be lower down in the hierarchy, or earlier on in your career, before you were exposed to those decision making and strategy setting processes. If you cast your mind back, you will likely recall a feeling of not understanding how and why (or even when and if) those decisions were made, and consequently, feeling a certain arbitrariness about them.

It is important to reflect on this from time to time so that you can plan appropriate internal communications to alleviate these feelings and get your teams fully engaged in what it is that the organisation needs to do. Pitch your internal communications not at people who have your exposure to  the decision making processes and the key data that support it, but to people who don't have the experience and benefit of such exposure.

photo credit: Bindaas Madhavi via photopin cc