An organization’s communication rituals are one of the most significant tools used to build trust, alignment and transparency both inside and outside the company. The certainty provided by constant reinforcement helps employees master their roles and assignments, relate and collaborate with other teams and team members and take full accountability for their tasks.

As leaders, we want our teams to be proud not only of what they’ve achieved but also of how they reached those achievements. Establishing a rhythm for our communication strategies allows us to celebrate when we execute a project well while allowing room to learn and grow when we fail. The expectation of transparent feedback, in turn, cultivates a blameless culture.

Making a shift toward transparent communication is especially crucial when handling challenges that crop up in the product development life cycle. Once an issue is identified through honest and objective inspections or an engagement survey, we can continuously develop solutions until all problems are resolved. Once we reach a solution, we can talk about how we solved the problem while recognizing and praising the teams that highlighted the issue in the first place.

Three Steps To Providing Transparency And Accountability

Throughout this robust end-to-end communication strategy, we’re embedding the principles of transparency and accountability in three steps: It starts with individual engagement and then ladders up into companywide reviews and reports before finally going out to the market.

1. Hold skip-level meetings for one-on-ones.

Leaders have two primary responsibilities: One is to put a spotlight on problems and challenges, and the second is to open the doors that break down information silos. Both can benefit from conducting skip-level meetings to understand what’s going on at the levels that aren’t receiving as much attention.

This is vital because leaders remain out of the loop if they only deal with the top of the organization. One-on-one interactions that are authentic, empathetic and clear are a great way to take the pulse of the organization. These meetings are an opportunity to allow employees to get to know you as a person and a leader while reminding them of the company’s long-term vision and how that translates into their individual OKRs.

I recommend never going more than a couple of weeks without talking with a team member, but these meetings must be purpose-driven. Crucial details often get missed when there’s no agenda. Ask people: What are you solving for? What do you need my help with? It’s impossible for a leader to solve every issue individually, but a rich agenda encourages people to actively seek information instead of hoping it will magically flow to them without their thoughtful effort.

Often within large organizations, many people don’t know how to navigate complexity because they’re unaware that a team on the other side of the building may have the answer they need. Opening doors facilitates collaboration and makes us more aligned and efficient as an organization.

2. Broadcast your updates.

Large organizations require consistent communications, not one-offs. Although it’s important to build trust and credibility with individuals, leaders also need to have the means of broadcasting their communications.

I like to send a short, concise weekly update based on information I’ve collected from one-on-ones to give those individuals an opportunity to shine. I want to pass autonomy and credibility back to their teams so that I celebrate the progress we’re making every week.

This cadence helps people feel heard. We broadcast in channels like Slack or email so they can give feedback and feel included. Once a month, we also have an all-hands meeting. Here, engineers share empathetic personal stories as they talk about their area, product and service. We then tie the stories back to the company so everybody relates to both the product and its business goal.

Our other regular communications ritual is the midyear reset. Because individuals and teams have been constantly informed of progress toward our goals, it becomes easier to round up what’s been accomplished. In fact, if you’re disciplined with these regular checkpoints, performance reviews almost write themselves—not just at the executive level but at all management levels.

3. Communicate to the market.

If we’re building a multiyear strategy for a company that includes a change in management, goals or inspection mechanisms, we’ll eventually want to announce those changes. However, you should only go public with that information if everybody internally already knows and believes in what you’re communicating. Otherwise, teams may think leadership is setting goals from an ivory tower.

Just as performance reviews aren’t hard to write with regular communication, neither are press releases and articles. In reality, leaders have been collecting data for these reports from their weekly and monthly updates, common documentation and internal product reviews.

Even in our quarterly reports, we’re following the same process—detailing how we align with our investors and market goals while keeping the public informed. Sometimes, we might spend a page or two talking about our passion for innovative technology as a means of showing investors how our engineers differentiate themselves. But what we’re really doing is building an employment brand and marketing our expertise.

Changing The Game

When I set an ambitious objective, I break it down into smaller, more achievable OKRs. This is when the value of communication rituals comes into play. One-on-ones let people know I trust their insights, and their consequent engagement flows all the way through to a better product. A weekly or monthly cadence realigns strategic goals. Once we’ve put a spotlight on our problems, opening doors helps connect people to solve them.

Throughout the entire process, repetition and consistency have the power to not just change the culture but transform the way an organization achieves its outcomes. Companies that set these ambitious goals, break them down into achievable chunks, drive alignment within their teams and enable delivery will be the winners—both in the short term and long term.