Communication is creating shared understanding and belief. Every great exchange can align and unite us, every bad one can break.
Startup success requires others (employees, customers, investors, and partners) to work with us. Attracting and retaining great people comes from sharing our future potential and subsequent value for them. It comes from allowing others to believe in our shared future and act toward it.
“Reality is not communicated; it is constructed through communication.” - James Carey
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Define the story and remove major comms bottlenecks
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First, craft and share our story. In an internal tool (Notion/Docs), clearly articulate why our problem exists (problem statement), what we believe in (mental models), and how the future could look like (ideal future). Based on these setups, craft why we should exist (purpose), what we should do (mission) and vision (where we’re headed towards), all in one sentence. These must come from both facts and our hearts, not a simple LLM output. To make this feel more real, record this in a video format.
Along with our story, be radically clear and precise in what we say or write. Use AI tools to analyze (not suggest; purely analyze) our writing (ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini) and speaking (Poised/yoodli). Most comms do not work because of misunderstanding; inadequate information (none or too much) conveyed terribly (unheardable, illegible) to different people (different beliefs, understanding and emotions). Make all major assumptions and context explicit, use words with precise definitions, and share the intention and goal clearly that anyone (even kids) to understand. No ambiguity to be left. None.
The core story and radical clarity in the very first touchpoint are the most important to build a belief leverage, where others will then share about it with their friends and colleagues and so on. Belief leverage creates compounding social capital that will help win getting great employees, investors, customers, and partners. Great people bring great people, hence we must be the first great people to start our story with.
Lastly, get bare-minimum comms habits right. Reply to any message in <24h, if not ASAP. Respond clearly. Arrive to and finish meetings on time, if late, tell so ASAP. Follow up <24h of meeting. Follow frequently and consistently. Consistent slow/no, ambiguous responses and being late are easy ways to unintentionally offend others. Respect others as we’d like them to respect ours.
Just with these three basics (core story, radical clarity and bare-minimum habit) alone, our communication can be good. These also improve our relationships at work and in life. Two low-hanging fruits, one stone.
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Document every important information
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Create scalable comms through documentation. Write down every important information (Notion/Docs) in a searchable structure. Writing can accumulate and scales, for new hires, externals or even AI tools to read.
Create and update a written, traceable source of truth (SoT), where all key comms (decisions, policies, specs, org info) go into. As a rule of thumb, write it down if something is said/asked twice. Quality of writing beats length or frequency. There should be only one single SoT that everyone can directly access, to avoid any telephone-game misunderstanding.
Default to async updates and information exchange. We spend too much time updating others, internally or externally. But verbal updates are time-consuming, prone to errors and not scalable. As a default, every information update should be in writing, concisely phrased, with most important information up front, with the name of the writer and the date/time of the update.
Write before meeting. Any exchange that takes more than 3 back-and-forth should be done in a meeting (synchronously); predominantly, relationship building, discussions, and major decisions. Even these should begin in writing. Whoever is proposing the issue/solution should share the context, analysis and proposal in writing prior to the meeting. Whoever has a counterproposal should share in writing prior to the meeting. This way, we can use the meeting time most effectively to discuss the most important points.
Use AI tools to write better. If expression is easier by speaking, use speech-to-text (Whispr). If easy to ramble, use LLM (ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini).