Newsletters & Internal Communication isn’t an obvious skill.

Learning the art of internal communication can transform your organization.

Ever since I started doing this newsletter on substack, I have converted a lot of the knowledge that I built over in the process of developing it into work related tasks.

I worked on an internal communications process for our team. I got better on e-mail, started spending a lot of time on e-mail. Learning a ton of stuff from best practices to things like basic email etiquette.

In the process of doing this, I built an internal system for our organization on Notion, and couldn’t get much adoption there, so I went back to building it on google drive and e-mail. Through the process, I have read so many blogs, watched videos and even read a book on this.

I am now getting into the space where I feel like, whoa, it’s so obvious that, this is how work is thought about, designed and implemented across organizations. but it wasn’t always like this. It is not obvious at all.

Why do I think other people don’t think about newsletters, memos, internal comms?

1. We have not been taught to be intentional about communication

I found that, most of us, have not been taught to communicate about work. To have official work communication etc. We have bad taste in our mouth about internal comms where it is only used to write request letters, termination letters and such. The truth is, that all work communication is robust and should be constantly on going.

2. We don’t think what we have to say is worth sharing

Most people think they only have a task list that they need to accomplish, thus, there is no reason to be busy talking about work. The truth is however that, you cannot separate all the work that we have to do from constantly communicating it. My view is, if we can communicate clearly about the work that we do; converse openly about our failures and challenges as well as successes, we can thrive in work and career.

3. We don’t know who we are talking to, therefore have nothing to say

Another is that, most people in the teams, don’t have a mapped out structure of who their direct reports are, what do they expect to hear from them? They only think they need to submit reports when requested.

Looking back, what are the key differences that I am noticing in how I think?

1. Being brutal in search for clarity and structure.
2. The need to surface all information and questions and worries from everyone regularly.
3. Being effective in use of time and resources. ( we only have x hours per week for work)
4. Being proactive about performance review goals and career growth.
5. Taking up leadership, responsibilities and more roles.
6. Acknowledging that we live in the information age. (market forces are dynamic, so is technology)
7. Adopting- converting new knowledge into work quickly.
8. Understanding that we are primarily knowledge workers.

I am fascinated by this new world of internal communications, newsletters, and just open communication in general. I hope to grow in training and equipping my teams to better handle work and adopt best practices.

I send out a newsletter every now and then at itskrox.substack.com If you subscribed, you might get a jist of what I am talking about.

Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter where I hang out all day.