5 essentials to healthy communication in a startup

In any organization (or team or relationship for that matter), communication is a function of its culture. In other words, the culture sets the conditions for the communication style and norms that people settle into. Consider the culture of the military and then that of a kindergarten classroom — pretty different types of communication going on!

Painfully reductive examples aside, these dynamics hold true across organizations of various sizes and contexts. And consistently healthy communication can only reliably happen when leadership intentionally bakes certain ingredients into the org culture.

Let’s define healthy communication as the the norms and style of exchanging information that are complementary to the organizational mission & objectives and increase team morale and retention.

So then, what can leaders do to build and maintain great communication in a company? Of course, going back to the military vs kindergarten analogy… it depends. But from working in and consulting for startups as well as larger consumer-tech orgs, the ones getting this right place intentional effort towards the following five things:

1. Alignment on mission: You may be surprised how many employees don’t understand or simply don’t know what the company mission is (or worse, don’t care!). Sure, sometimes this is because the company is still trying to find product-market-fit, or the leadership is operating in dissonance with the mission, or maybe the mission just sucks. But more often, leadership simply fails to help people connect with and be energized by the mission. Instead, fully commit to your mission and then get people on board and excited about it.
2. Clarity on near and long-term goals: Aligning on the mission is fundamental (the why) but it’s also important to drill a layer deeper and be clear on goals (the what). What are we aiming to accomplish this quarter? What does a successful year look like? Are we focused on maximizing top-line revenue or profitability? What key metrics are we using to measure performance? Being lockstep on goals gets everyone on the same page and significantly reduces communication friction.
3. Commitment to transparency: One of a startup’s key super powers is speed. You can try things quickly, learn, and adapt much more quickly than larger orgs. To truly maximize this advantage, startups should strive to be open and free-flowing with information and insights. Red tape, siloes, and gatekeeping are the enemies of speed so strive to minimize them in a fast growing startup. Also, transparency builds trust, which we know is essential to healthy communication.
4. Ownership of results at all levels: So the company is aligned on big picture stuff, goals, and committed to transparency. This sets the conditions for everyone — from senior leadership to individual contributors — to own their own outputs and KPIs that ladder up to company goals. This part is critical because you could get all the previous steps right but if everyone isn’t invested in delivering results, the culture you worked so hard to develop can start to crack due to discontent, demotivation, and confusion.
5. Processes, artifacts and tools that eliminate superfluous meetings, emails, and calls: This is what many jump to immediately when trying to fix an unhealthy communication culture. It’s tempting to read testimonials for a cool new project management tool and think that it will dramatically improve how your teams communicate and perform. But make sure you address steps 1-4 first before looking to technology to save the day. After that, shiny new processes and tools can be a game changer. Moving low-fi comms from email to Slack, shifting task management from spreadsheets to Trello, automating 1:1 and feedback processes in Lattice, and other such process and platform upgrades can radically streamline your team’s communication fidelity.

When all these are firing, communication boosts productivity instead of creating friction. People and teams know where the company is heading, what they need to do to get there, and communicate freely and effectively with confidence. They use the right tools and processes to exchange information asynchronously and live. Most importantly, their culture of healthy communication fosters job satisfaction and gives meaning to their work.