I love Anand Sanwal’s CB Insights newsletter for a thousand reasons, not the least of which is that it makes me snort with laughter more than anything else these days.
In a recent newsletter he reflected on challenges as his team, which was 25 in 2014, is now over 200. Here’s what he says:
“The two biggest challenges that I continue to grapple with are:
- communication
- maintaining culture
Communication is definitely tougher with size.
At 25 people, everyone kind of knows what is going on through osmosis. It’s not perfect, but it sort of works. . . At 200, communication is critical.”
Yup, Anand. That’s exactly right. Internal communication is critical.
Who makes your brilliant idea a reality? Your team. Who communicates to your potential customers and partners around the world? Your team. Who enables you and your brilliant vision to scale? Your team. You must tell your own people, over and over again, where you are going and why.
You must convey your vision to your employees every chance you get. You show your fabulous team what each of their vital roles are in transforming vision into reality. You answer questions as transparently as you can. You spark inspiration. You recognize and reward achievements that further the vision.
When you do all of these things over and over again, all of the time, you create a unified team. You lead by communicating.
Internal communications is a never-ending, absolutely essential undertaking. Every great leader is as much as of an evangelist internally as externally. There is no other way to scale a vision into a global reality. When you really invest in internal communications, you can build a massive engine to deliver your vision to the world.
Your business must scale, and you must scale with it. Great communicators create the change they want to see in the world. poseycorp helps innovators build powerful messages and the skill to deliver them so they can break through the noise and be heard! Click here to receive pragmatic communications advice in your inbox every month.
poseycorp’s next Ask Me Anything About Communications is Friday, October 5th at 9 am PDT. This month, we’re talking about Creating Echo Chambers: Delivering One Idea Through All Channels, All the Time! Click here to register!
