ThemeKnowledge & Systems
CardCard 29 of 66
Questions5 to explore

Internal communication

How you communicate & with what tools

How information moves inside the organization determines how well people can actually do their work, and most teams have never mapped it deliberately.

Internal communication is not just which tools the organization uses. It is the norms around those tools: what gets sent where, who is expected to respond and how fast, what is broadcast versus what is a conversation, and what should never be in a chat thread at all. Without those norms being explicit, people fill in the gaps with their own assumptions.

Most communication problems are not about the wrong tool. They are about unclear expectations: who needs to know what, when is a response required, and where does a decision get documented after it is made. Getting those questions answered and written down reduces noise and prevents important things from falling through the cracks.

Documenting internal communication does not mean creating a rulebook. It means capturing enough of the current approach that a new person can orient themselves quickly and that the team can have a real conversation when the approach is not working.

What to capture

For this part of the company brain, what is worth writing down and keeping current. The goal is not a complete archive but a living record that new people can read and returning people can trust.

Channels & their purpose

Which tools are used for which kinds of communication: what goes in chat versus email versus the project system, and any channels that have specific purposes or audiences.

Norms & response expectations

What the organization expects in terms of response times, availability outside working hours, notification hygiene, and the difference between urgent and non-urgent communication.

Broadcast & announcement flows

How important information reaches the whole organization: all-hands cadence, announcement channels, and who has responsibility for organization-wide communication.

Decision documentation

Where decisions get recorded after they are made in meetings or threads, so that the outcome is findable by people who were not in the room.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

If someone needed to find a decision made three months ago, where would they look and how likely are they to find it?
Are there communication norms the team follows that new hires have to pick up informally rather than read somewhere?
Which channel or tool is most often used in ways it was not intended for, and what does that say about a gap in the current setup?
How does important information reach people who are working asynchronously or in different time zones?
When a conversation that started in chat results in a decision, where does that decision end up?

Things to notice

Tool documentation and communication documentation are not the same thing. Listing which apps the organization uses tells people nothing about how they are supposed to use them.
Norms that differ between teams cause confusion when people work across them. If different parts of the organization operate very differently, document that variation rather than writing one rule that does not fit anyone.
Communication documentation goes stale as tools change and teams grow. Treat it as something to review when you onboard a new cohort or change a major tool, not as a one-time setup document.