Internal Communications

Internal communication fails in predictable ways: the wrong people hear it first, the message explains the decision but not the consequence, and nobody tests the draft before it reaches 2,000 inboxes. This skill treats an announcement as an artifact with a blast radius, a sequence, and a pass/fail quality bar — not as a writing exercise.

The three levers are who hears it in what order, what the message must contain, and which channel carries it. Get those right and tone matters far less than people assume.

When to use this skill

• Announcing a reorg, layoff, or leadership change where sequencing errors are unrecoverable
• Rolling out a policy change (RTO, expenses, security, performance process) that people must act on
• Communicating a product or system migration with a deadline and a required user action
• Structuring a recurring all-hands or weekly exec update that currently reads as a status dump
• Pressure-testing a draft before send: reading level, jargon density, missing elements
• Deciding channel and cadence for a multi-week change programme rather than a one-shot email