Communication Strategies for Effective CEOs

The Fundamental Premise

Most of us are wired to believe that if we say something, those who hear us will just naturally execute it exactly as we had envisioned it in the first place. If only managing people were that easy. In reality, just because you said, doesn't mean it's actually going to happen. Without providing the right direction, determination, and ongoing communication about the context of the work to be done, the chances of actually observing the result you envisioned are very low.

The fundamental premise is that success is achieved not when the CEO thinks something is important, but when everyone thinks it is.

Narratives (not facts) are what move people

Subtract facts from reality, and what's left is storytelling. Great leaders know that while facts help people understand and comprehend reality, it's in narratives that make enthusiasm, excitement and passion "happen". Ultimately, we are the stories that we tell.

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

When communicating important new messages, rather than presenting new facts try thinking of it as broaching a new narrative. Think of what you're trying to accomplish in a broader and more holistic way, surrounding the facts (the actual company goals and milestones) with a convincing and appealing narrative.

The why always before the what

Your best people want to know the why and understand the broader context beyond their individual responsibilities. Just because you said the what, it won't magically make it happen unless you have a very convincing why. To make things happen you need to spend a disproportionate amount of time on the why than the what.

Your audience is already busy with their own work. In order to get them to take notice, and far more importantly, change behavior, it's essential you provide the context behind your message. The deeper you get into the why the more they will buy into your message.

Alignment is not one-way only

No matter how clear and profound your explanations, after explaining the facts and your narrative, it's equally critical that the team feels heard on the subject. People have different perspectives and it's vital that communication goes both ways. People must be able to ask questions and offer critiques and ideas.

Repeat, repeat, repeat

David Gergen, former advisor to several US presidents wrote:

"History teaches that almost nothing a leader says is heard if spoken only once"

There's no doubt here: repetition is the mother of all learning. If you want to inculcate in people a specific message or a specific new set of behaviors, you have to repeat things. To make sure your message is really percolating down to every member of the organization, you have to repeat it so often that "you grow sick of hearing yourself say it" as Jeff Weiner from LinkedIn simply put.

How to Communicate as a Founder CEO

Weekly Team Update: One of the best communication strategies for entrepreneurs is a weekly update email to employees, advisors, mentors, and investors. The email gives an overview of tactical updates from the previous week and for the week ahead. The basic macro elements: revenues, recruiting, product and customers.

Metrics Weekly Round-Up: Peter Thiel, back in his days as Founder/CEO at PayPal, used to run internal weekly and monthly staff meetings to discuss every single metric behind the company's progress. Aggregate the top three most important company-wide metrics in a single digest delivered to everyone.

Beyond the Obvious Weekly: As a Founder CEO there are certain things about your company that only you can see. Sharing your thoughts in internal memos is critical to helping the people around you understand the broader context of your vision.

Personal Weekly Newsletter: Write a personally curated publication shared weekly with your entire company. This helps share the thoughts that wouldn't normally make it into an all-hands meeting. David Cancel, Drift Founder/CEO, writes a weekly email newsletter every Sunday night—anyone can subscribe whether they work at Drift or not.

All-Hands Meeting Notes: This is probably the most important meeting in your entire company. Maximize coverage by sending company-wide minutes after the meeting has ended.

Quarterly V2MOM

One of the best examples comes from Marc Benioff at Salesforce. V2MOM stands for: Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures.

• Vision: Define what you want the team to do
• Values: Establish what is most important about that vision
• Methods: Illustrate how you will get the job done
• Obstacles: Identify challenges you may have to overcome
• Measures: Specify the actual result you aim to achieve

The V2MOM is an exercise in awareness, the result of which is total company alignment.

What a Founder CEO should expect from their exec team

Your responsibilities include the communication of your entire executive team. Expect your exec teams to distribute context at the edge of the organization.

Make public meeting notes: Jack Dorsey famously initiated the meeting-notes policy at Square: "Any meeting of more than two people, someone's required to take notes and send them to an [email] alias."

Email Transparency: Stripe was one of the first companies to embrace full email transparency. By convention, every email at Stripe is CC-ed to lists that go to either the entire company or to a particular team.

General Principles

1. Cut through the clutter: Pick a medium where people are actually able to focus and read at a slower pace.
2. Pick an internal naming convention: Create an emotional connection between your messages and your people. Find terminology that resonates and jumps off the page.
3. Be Consistent: Once the schedule is made, never miss an update. Once the medium is selected, never change it. Once the tone is established, never subvert it.
4. Measure, Measure, Measure: Just like you measure everything about your product, measure everything about your internal comms.

Conclusions

Good communication compounds over time. But by the same token, the implications of bad communication magnify progressively. If your people aren't informed by you, there's a good chance they'll be misinformed by others.

Poor information and unaddressed knowledge gaps compound over time and lead to all sorts of inconsistent contexts, and differing contexts are the root cause of conflict and unnecessary disagreements.

The job of communicating is simply never done. Work hard to make it part of the daily routine of yourself and the leaders and the operators in your company.