Establishing Employee Communications

Discussing One Of The 3 key focuses of a CEO: Culture

As a company grows it will reach a point where there are not personal relationships between executives and all employees. That is the point when more formal communication needs to be given real effort. It needs to become part of the culture. This has to be an important activity of the CEO, establishing expected communications practices. CEO’s need to think through how they will stay connected with and informed by the broader employee base, notice I said how THEY will be informed BY the employees. Additionally the CEO needs to ensure that communication flow fully through the organization, as its common for information not to reach down into the organization (never seems to get beyond the executive team). Basically the CEO needs to ensure they don’t end up behind a barrier of their executive team but ensure they don’t manage around their exec team, a true balancing act.

Here are some solid strategies that I have used and put in place that can help drive broad and bi-directional communications: establishing when and how you will have all company communications (meetings/emails/blog posts), establishing time with the CEO and smaller teams, establishing an open door policy and be strategic about where the CEO physically spends time and has a desk.

Standing Company Wide Communications

A CEO needs to establish a standing meeting for the company when they will inform the team. It’s clearly push communications, not my desired bi-directional communications. However, I found that establishing this more formal channel is well received by the team, assuming the meetings are done right. If these meetings are just “ra ra” and “good news” focused, they will be generally useless and fail. They NEED to be honest, worthwhile content for the employees. Your goal here is to give the employees information that allows them to make good decisions that align with the company direction.

Topics I would suggest including are:

- Clearly explaining financials (hopefully they are always good). I think you will be surprised how many employees don’t understand your company’s numbers, take time to be sure they “get it”. This means breaking down how you think about and account for revenue and as much as you can on expenses.

- Hiring information (what positions we are adding, who has joined the company) to be useful for people. At times I would also include information on those that have departed an organization in one of these meetings, it was a hotly debated topic as not everyone wanted to highlight departures. The rational is that the rest of the organization wants to know who has left and importantly how the tasks that person owed is getting done.

- Company progress towards goals and key projects, an honest view. How are our products progressing? How is customer adoption? Any issues we are dealing with? Any major forward looking projects we need to all know about?

Of course you want these meetings to feel great to employees, but you also want them to be authentic and build trust. This is YOUR time as the CEO to have clear, unambiguous communication to employees. Don’t blow it.

I also would use broad emails from time to time as I saw situations that required some form of communication. Of course this can also be a Slack channel or blog that a CEO uses to get information to the company. Basically, the advice is to adopt a second company wide push communication beyond just the meeting. It gives real flexibility to get info out quickly but also because people absorb info in different ways at different times. I strongly suggest that notes and posts not be overly casual; remember every word a CEO shares in the organization is interpreted by people, this is the info they are making decisions on. Therefore, a CEO has to be clear and precise.

Group Sessions

I have also had success in taking the time to sit down with smaller teams. Maybe it’s a department or a work-group. It is very time consuming, but totally worth it. I would use these sessions to share info with the teams that they may not see other places. If I was meeting engineering I may go into some more details on what I am seeing in the market right now or updates on sales. When talking with sales, they always felt that they could know more about operational changes or product updates. However, I REALLY used these sessions to learn. I went in with questions. I wanted their perspective. If I had a team I didn’t know well or seemed tentative with me I might talk to someone from the team in advance to try and get a allies to help me gain participation from the room. After a couple of these sessions (which I tried to do quarterly) I would find teams were more willing to share what they really saw around the org and real problems they faced.

My favorite questions were:

- What could we do to make you more effective?

- What do you see every day that drives you crazy?

- What is the biggest threat you see?

- What do you see in the market?

Wow, treasure trove of information. Important to note I always included that team’s manager in the meeting, so as not to alienate them. Yes it may cause people to not speak about tissues with their boss, but that was the trade-off I made. During these meetings I tried to avoid giving direction or instruction to the team, but instead would handle that with the manager post meeting.

Open Door Policy

Many companies say they have an open door policy, but it’s really not. I never announced an open door policy, instead I tried to live it. I would be around the office visible. I would walk the halls talking to people. When I was in an office, I would keep the door truly open. I would spend time where people where at (e.g. the kitchen). Seek out people and have hallway conversations. People in the org need to see the CEO engaging with a lot of people to make it clear that it’s OK for everyone. Avoid the ivory tower. There are some challenges with the approach. At times people would come in at an inopportune time or stop you in the hallway when you were late for something. At times they would bring you issues or suggestions that you couldn’t’ act on, but it would be wrong to dismiss the input, so those situations had to be handled carefully. Also, as with the small group meetings, its time consuming. I could get past the time consumption and challenge but as with everything else, it took effort.

This leads to thinking about where the CEO spends time and where they physically sit — where is their desk. I know many CEO’s who want to sit in a desk like the rest of the team, not behind a door in an office. Good move, hard to execute fully. What I have found is that most CEO’s have a lot of topics and discussions that are not really for everyone. Also, many employees will listen extra to conversations the CEO is having looking for a bit of that “inside info”. So having a desk in the open area is great, but you need a dedicated conference room or private spot to go into. I found that I ended up with about half my day that others should not be distracted with, hence I decided to sit in an office. I put the office in a very visible place in the office and it had a big window wall, trying to ensure I didn’t look like I was hiding from the org. I also ensured I spent meaningful time in every office. Frequency varies for many reasons, but the CEO has to have face time with all teams. Not a quick drop in. Spend a couple days in those offices, you will learn a lot about the office specific culture.

I’ve written before that culture takes more time for a CEO than they may expect and these strategies on communication are a great illustration of that fact. Don’t take short cuts and don’t let communication be an accident. Be intentional and ensure the organization has the information they need to do their jobs. In the process get informed as a CEO so that you are making good decisions as well.