This week in the world’s #1 newsletter on leadership communication:

Why “Keeping Everyone Informed” Doesn’t Work
On the Show: How AI Can Make You More Authentic
Book Recommendation: The Book of Elon

⏰ On Wednesday my live cohort begins. Watch YouTube reviews or register here for one of the last seats ⌛️

Why “Keeping Everyone Informed” Doesn’t Work

Last month a CEO asked me why his team was disengaged.

"How does communication work around here?" I asked.

"When we decide something, we cascade the information down to keep everyone informed."

“That's your problem.”

Cascading information down the chain of command creates the illusion of communication. In reality, it creates distortion, delay, and silence. The important stuff never gets discussed.

That’s why cascading is a one-way street to disengagement.

W. Edwards Deming said every system is perfectly designed to get the results it produces.

If your people are disengaged, you don't have a people problem. You have a system problem.

Deming (who died in 1993) was one of the most influential thinkers in modern management. He figured out that “a bad system will beat a good person every time.”

Years ago I learned this the hard way at easyJet, where I was responsible for building the communication systems for 10,000 people spread across a continent.

Through trial and failure, we created a system that I know would solve the CEO’s problem.

It’s called Push, Pull, Exchange.

You can implement it in a small team as well as a company with 100,000 employees. It is the most effective way to ensure your team is aligned AND engaged. Here’s how it works:

1/ Push: Leadership communicates directly to everyone

These are your town halls, emails and weekly updates. Make sure there are no middle layers filtering the message.

If information has to go through layers of management, “it serves to enhance the power of the manager, but fails to serve the company,” says Elon Musk (more on that below).

Try this: Every Friday send a 1-minute video to your team or the whole organization, answering three questions: "Here's where we're going, here’s why, and here’s what we need to do now to make it happen."

Leaders who have introduced this format tell me it’s now the most important minute of their week.

2/ Pull: Regular feedback loops to understand what your people think

Not annual surveys but continuous pulse checks: What's working? What's not? What are we missing? There are tools that make this super easy.

3/ Exchange: Real conversations, not just announcements.

Leaders meet teams for coffee chats or walking meetings. Hierarchy is irrelevant, it’s an open exchange – the kind of conversation where people actually talk to each other.

If your strategy isn't landing, it's not because people don't care. It's because they were never part of the conversation.

Hit reply and let me know how communication works in your organization!

ON THE SHOW

How AI Can Make You More Authentic

I do a weekly show to help you become a top 1% communicator. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple, or Youtube.

Last year I held a TEDx Talk on how AI impacts leadership communications.

One thing became clear to me then: If you’re using AI to communicate as a leader, it’s either making you more authentic or it’s instantly destroying trust.

This week I’m joined by Allison Shapira, Harvard lecturer and author of AI for the Authentic Leader.

She works with top leaders and what she’s seeing is this: AI isn’t making them better communicators … it’s making them replaceable.

Her solution: the AI authenticity loop.“ This is not keeping the human in the loop. The human is the loop.”

Together we ‘ll show you how to use AI so every word you say actually sounds like you.

Watch and listen to the full episode here:

BOOK RECOMMENDATION

The Book of Elon

Whatever you think of Elon Musk, there is no denying that he is the most successful builder of companies of our generation.

Which means there must be something he can teach us – including on how communication works in his companies.

Eric Jorgenson’s (curator of the Almanach of Naval Ravikant) compiled over a million of Elon’s words and distilled them down to the essentials in his Book of Elon.

It turns out, communication inside Tesla and SpaceX rhymes with my own experience (see above):

1/ There are two schools of thought about how information should flow within companies. The most common way is chain of command. It empowers the manager, but fails to serve the company.

2/ The way to solve this is to allow free flow of information between all levels. Problems get solved quickly when a person just talks to a person in another department to resolve the issue.

“Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through a ‘chain of command’.

3/ Minimize jargon and acronyms because anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication. “We don’t want people to have to memorize a glossary just to function.”

I predict that we will see more companies shift to the free flow of information between all levels for two reasons:

First, AI needs data and despises silos. And second, only fast companies will survive the AI transformation, and the free flow of information speeds up innovation.

Have an inspired weekend,

Oliver