As businesses confront the need to upgrade their legacy systems, the communication rituals that bring people together to modernize technology are often left out of the conversation. Yet we cannot harness the power of teams without alignment. I have found the biggest problem in meeting our strategic goals is often not even the choice of technology or architecture — it is gaining buy-in from employees. This has been true every time I have gone through the modernization journey. It is usually in the discovery phase that it becomes clear that everyone has their own perspective on modernization. The view looks very different depending where you sit, from the executive to the manager and the product engineer. So the first step of a communications strategy is helping people in the broader organization understand our long-term vision and the role they play in that bigger picture. We have to build a feedback loop of two-way communications that addresses individuals and teams as stakeholders in the journey. Our communications rituals should let people know exactly what parts of the business we are modernizing, why we are on this path, and their direct contributions. People will only own the process and feel empowered when they believe in what we are trying to achieve. Inspection then provides an opportunity to communicate progress, success, and any failures to the team at large.

How to inspect for alignment

Inspection tools and mechanisms are not just about measuring performance. They allow leaders to have a conversation with people about what is working, what isn’t, and what resources or changes they need for improvements. We need to know where we are winning so people can leverage those successes, double down, and offer other teams a repeatable pattern for acceleration. While it is important to use our communications rituals to celebrate wins, we should also be self-critical about what we are not doing well. Here’s where establishing a blameless culture allows for accountability and innovation. Teams need to know that we are going to fail a lot but when it happens, failure will be used to learn, get better, and set up future success. How do we measure how well we are communicating? Quantitative metrics come back to setting a communications framework and then delivering. In other words, it is a say/do ratio. Are people doing what they said they would do? Whether posting weekly updates, running monthly all-hands, or sharing the results of success meetings, are people following through on their commitments to communicate?

Diversifying communication channels

Not all communication is one-directional like email or narratives and PowerPoint decks. There are different flavors of communication for executives, management, and the broader organization, so leaders need to familiarize themselves with the personas of each stakeholder group. I find you have to be very terse, smart, and action-oriented with executives: What has been executed, our current status, and what is needed from them. This may mean sitting down with executives in a closed-door conversation, or opening up the meeting to include management and giving people a chance to shine. As you navigate through different stakeholders, more detail is required. Teams and individuals may need plans and reports with specific action steps, before an all-hands meeting or project update ties the micro level to the macro level. Building alignment keeps what success looks like crisp and top of mind for everybody. In terms of measuring the effectiveness of communication qualitatively, informal conversations, one-on-ones, and skip-levels offer a temperature gauge of the organization; while surveys or pulses can show how connected people are to the overall communications strategy.

Addressing the most common mistakes

The two most common mistakes I have witnessed when communicating progress towards modernization is over- or under-communication. If people get lost in detail, they do not have the context of what an update means relative to the overall modernization effort. Equally, a lack of information sharing leaves people guessing. The frequency of communications can also fall into the same trap of too much or not enough, while recognition and self-critique need to be kept in balance. Executives can lead by example by agreeing on how updates are going to be sent out and at what level and depth. A structure and framework can be established with bottom-up feedback, but it has to be directed from the top down to ensure consistency. It is only once a company’s communications strategy has been grounded internally that its leaders have earned the right to communicate externally. Of course, you don’t want to tip off your competition too early, so be thoughtful about how to align external and internal communications. Making modernization a core part of the company culture will help the employment brand when you tell the street.

Keeping everyone on the same page

Regardless of a company’s size, strategy is just the iterative set of steps that evolve an organization from the starting point to achieving its long-term vision. People’s immediate goals around a metric should always be right in front of them while communication rituals update everyone on progress towards the larger strategic objectives. That is how we keep the big picture in sight as we work through the many steps towards transformation.