Internal Communications Guide

INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS ARE CRITICAL FOR EARLY-STAGE STARTUPS

Startups are a bit of a different breed regarding internal communications. Because of the rapid pace of change, founders and leaders need to communicate even more often than more established organizations. They also need to deploy a wider range of communication strategies to ensure key messages are received effectively and keep the team aligned

The thing that most founders and leaders don’t realize is that they are typically light years ahead of the rest of the team. By definition, they need to be frontrunners trailblazing into the future to clarify big-picture strategy and gather resources of every nature for the team.

Leaders of early-stage startups - especially deeply technical ones - have to be able to code-switch between the forest and the trees. The rest of the team, typically, is stuck in the weeds focused on experiments and data sets.

There is a gap between what founders and leaders think about on a daily and weekly basis and what’s on the rest of the team’s mind. Leaders have to throw breadcrumbs back to the team way more often than they realize, reminding them about the big picture - like goals and values. It’s pretty easy, as a therapeutics company, to forget that the company exists to help real people live longer, healthier lives. While your leadership may not ever forget this, it’s important to have effective redundancies so that the full team deeply understands key company messages.

In this internal communications guide, you’ll find an overview of many of the different ways in which we - as leaders - need to communicate with our team in order to achieve company goals.

GENERAL COMMUNICATION BEST PRACTICES

Communication is a two-way street. In order for someone to accurately comprehend your message, you need to be thoughtful about what you are communicating - and how you communicate as well. Here are some general best practices:

Know your audience

As a best practice, it’s always best to start first with knowing your audience. What do they know? What do they want to know? What will they be worried about? What norms do you need to consider? Are they a content expert in your field?

Unless you are completely confident that you know your audience’s technical comfort level, you want to take the “8th-grade PhD approach.” That means that you are speaking to someone assuming they have the technical knowledge of an eighth grader (think: basic biology) and be accurate enough that a PhD-level scientist would agree that what you’re saying is technically true.

Keep it simple and brief

Startup pace is much faster than academia. Try your best to keep your communications brief, clear, and to the point. It’s not a good use of resources for you to write a massive memo on pretty much anything.

Pull out action items

Make it clear if you have an ask in your communication and what it is. Do you need or want something? Make sure that you pull this information out with formatting, like bolding text, bullet points, or white space, so that it’s clear who is supposed to do what by a certain date.

Pick the right mode of communication

Have something thoughtful you want to communicate? Email may be best. Are you looking for a discussion? Hop on a call. Need to do a quick check-in? Slack is great for that.

Before you pick which form of communication makes the most sense, ask yourself what kind of interaction would be most appropriate and effective. Often conflicts emerge when you pick the wrong “channel.”

Manage yourself before communicating

We all have moments when big feelings pop up about something at work. The key is to manage yourself and not communicate when you are boiling hot or ripe with worry. Write an email to yourself and DO NOT send it. Sleep on it and see how you feel 24 hours later. Most conflicts blow up when we don’t take the time to first manage ourselves before communicating.

Interrupt bias and be mindful of discriminatory language

Implicit bias happens all of the time. Instead of trying to eliminate bias, which often happens below our consciousness, best practices suggest that our goal is to interrupt it instead. Here’s a quick video to interrupt bias and some tools to help you think about reducing bias in the workplace.

Questions > statements

Think carefully before you share your next great idea. Would other people be more likely to find this idea interesting if you were to figure out a way to frame it as a question instead? Perhaps you can ask a question that helps other people come to the same conclusion you did. Some of our favorite phrases for doing this are “I wonder if…” or “I’m curious to hear…” Open-ended questions are some of the most valuable communication tools to deploy.

Body language and tone can make or break a communication

Whatever message you are emitting may be entirely derailed if you say it in a snippy tone or use your body language in a way that suggests disrespect or disinterest. It’s a good practice to record yourself in a meeting every so often and watch closely. You may not realize it but your “thinking face,” may come off as an “angry face.”

Try to match others’ energy level and volume

It’s helpful to try to meet other people, energetically, where they are. If someone is soft-spoken and quiet, try to ground yourself before your chat so that you don’t accidentally squash them before the conversation even starts. As awkward as it may seem, try to count to 10 in your head to give someone else time to think before responding. Some people need a little quiet time to process before they’re able to share.

Check for typos and mistakes - especially with names

Before you press send, make sure you aren’t making any silly mistakes. A huge pet peeve is spelling someone’s name inaccurately. As a sign of respect, make sure you get it right. For high-stakes communications, have someone else check your work or read your work aloud to catch errors before sending.

COMMUNICATING ABOUT GOALS AND GETTING STUFF DONE

So much of what happens at a startup is about getting stuff done - making ideas into reality. If everyone sprints in their own direction, it’s unlikely that you will actually be able to move the needle meaningfully. It’s essential that you align everyone so that they know what is important and how they are contributing to the company’s goals.

A healthy startup follows a quarterly goal-setting process to get buy-in and set team goals. It will also help individuals set goals that incorporate these larger goals with personal career goals. When individuals understand how they contribute to company goals, that’s when the real synergy begins to happen and the whole becomes larger than the sum of its parts. Startup magic happens when everyone knows what’s important and resources can be deployed to accelerate and catalyze progress.

COMMUNICATING CULTURE + VALUES

Culture is about defining the way that you get work done. It’s about behavior and actions. Lots of folks think that values are just pretty words on your website, but they should be way more than that. They would be communicated regularly and often and woven into daily practices in your organization. You need to reinforce positive behaviors just as much as you need to nip unwelcome behaviors in the bud quickly. The more you tolerate bad behavior, the more you condone it. Think about the entire life cycle of an employee - from onboarding to offboarding - where do your values come into play for them? You need to draw attention to your values more often than you think to make sure your team never has to wonder about what is expected of them or is unsure how to behave.

MANAGER COMMUNICATIONS

Communication is bread and butter for managers. It’s equally important to give positive feedback as it is to quickly nip issues in the bud with critical feedback. Communication is how you build relationships, create safety, and troubleshoot issues with talent. The key is to have a regular line of communication open with weekly meetings to keep goals on track and support individual learning and growth.

COMMUNICATING SCIENCE + DATA

In all likelihood, your biotech or climate tech company is a multidisciplinary organization. You likely have scientists and/or engineers from several different fields collaborating and pushing boundaries. For sure, it’s hard to speak technically to non-technical audiences. It’s actually just as hard to communicate with other scientists from slightly different areas of expertise. We often get entrenched in our own world and lose track of what others know. Words you are used to using all of the time are meaningless jargon sometimes to others.

Effective collaboration means effective communication.

WORK WITH A COACH ON YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS

It’s extremely helpful to get specific feedback on your written, oral, and visual communication. If you don’t happen to get this sort of feedback regularly from your manager or boss, consider inviting a coach to work with you.