Peak Performance Newsletter #20: Designing Your Company's Communication Architecture
A New Chapter in the Founder's Guide
Hey all,
This week’s post is a new entry in A Founder’s Guide to Everything titled Designing Your Communication Architecture. It’s based on my observations around how startups often fail to communicate effectively.
The essay starts out as a consideration around different modes of communication, but is really about the Founder/CEO’s core operational responsibility of designing their organization’s communication infrastructure. This is an oft overlooked responsibility of leadership and one that can be make or break to a company’s success.
Enjoy!
P.S. I’m not sure if the title is capturing what I want it to. When you’re done, let me know what you think it should be titled. Seriously. I’m stumped.
Overview
Effective communication is the heartbeat of any project. Be it a romantic relationship, a business partnership, or running a company of 150 people, how well you communicate is a key determinant of success.
One of the oft-overlooked elements in communication is the selection of your mode of communication, or the channel in which you communicate. In the rush of company-building, it’s easy to think that all communication channels are created equal. This line of thinking commonly leads leaders to optimize for the fastest and lowest effort channel.
Maximizing speed and minimizing effort above all else in communication is a costly mistake. A great deal of relationship debt accumulates from a fundamental mismatch between the quality of a message being delivered and the channel it’s delivered in. If you’ve spent any time in startups, you’ll know that relationship debt is one of the more common killers.
Attributes of Communication Channels
When selecting a communication channel, there are three primary attributes to consider:
Latency: The delay between insight and the message being delivered
Resolution: How clearly the intention of the message can be understood
Efficiency: How many collective mental resources are consumed in the message being communicated and understood
🎧 Latency
In networking, latency is the time it takes for data to pass from one network node to another. Latency is a measure of delay. The inverse of latency is speed.
In communication, we’ll consider latency to be the delay between having something to communicate and that communication being received by the intended recipient.
A high latency communication channel is one with a long delay between having something to communicate and that message being received. That may include scheduling a meeting for the future or waiting for a recurring meeting
A low latency communication channel is one with a very short gap between having something to communicate and the message being receive. That might include chat apps or picking up the phone and calling someone.
🖥️ Resolution
In systems theory, resolution is the amount of detail that you can see in a system. Higher resolution means higher information density.
Think of a computer monitor: a higher resolution means more pixels which means more data. This increase in data creates more clarity around what is being displayed.
In communication, resolution is the amount of information available while communicating.
The most common mistake that companies and leaders make when communicating is around resolution. The unconscious logic goes something like this: resolution is largely determined by the content of the communication. If I provide sufficient content the receiver will have sufficient resolution, and therefore the communication channel doesn’t matter.
Here’s the mistake: communication is like an iceberg, and content is its tip. Maybe 10% of the data is contained in the content. The other 90% is contained in how you are when you’re communicating it.
Humans evolved in face-to-face tribal environments. There is a massive amount of information communicated both consciously and unconsciously via body language, facial expression, and tone of voice. These are hugely important data points for us to have about one another. Knowing my CEO is stressed about an initiative gives me valuable insight into how I might want to approach it vs. if they’re relaxed. I might err on the side of faster, more detailed, and in more of a finished state vs more high-level and exploratory. Knowing their state empowers me to ask these contextual questions, at the very least.
High resolution communication channels provide data not only about the content, but the interpersonal context of communication. Low resolution communication channels put constraints on the context, limiting us to the content.
🔄 Efficiency
Efficiency is how many collective mental resources are used in communicating a message.
High efficiency communication is communication where the message is communicated and understood with as few mental resources as possible. The communicator is able to convey the message in a way which is understood by the receiver relatively easily.
Low efficiency communication consumes a huge amount of mental resources for one or both parties. There is mental friction for each player where the message takes some effort to be understood.
Efficiency is the result of matching a message to the right communication channel per the current context. One must consider a number of elements in determining efficiency, including:
How much resolution is needed for the message to be understood
How much additional contextual information needs to be communicated and if the communication channel is right for that
If there will be some degree of an exchange, if both communicator and receiver will be able to effectively have that exchange in the communication channel of choice
How much trust exists between the parties that are communicating and the current state of the relationship
Efficiency is where choosing a mode of communication becomes an art. I’ll describe some considerations for tradeoffs below.
Choosing a Communication Channel
In an ideal world, all of our communication would be low latency, high resolution, and high efficiency. In the real world there are inevitable tradeoffs between each element.
Asynchronous vs. Synchronous Communication
When choosing a communication channel, one of the more important divides to consider is whether to communicate your message asynchronously or synchronously.
A synchronous communication channel is one where everyone must be present at the same time to communicate. These are most commonly meetings or phone calls.
Asynchronous communication channels do not require participants to be there at the same time. These are things like chat and email.
Generally speaking, asynchronous communication channels are higher latency and lower resolution. However when done well, asynchronous communication can drastically increase overall communication efficiency. and productivity For companies and functions where uninterrupted deep work matters, building effective systems for asynchronous communication can provide tremendous returns. More on this below in “Implementing rules at your company.”
Asynchronous Communication Channels
💬 Chat apps
Latency: Low
Resolution: Low
Most Efficient at:
Yes/No questions
Straightforward tactical updates, questions, or coordination
Culture and relationship-building.
Chat apps have become many company’s go-to channel for communication. The reality of the matter: they do the job terribly. Chat apps are by far the most abused communication channel in early stage companies today.
Companies have come to love chat apps because they’re fast. They’re low latency and allow for the transfer of information near instantaneously. The tradeoff is that they’re horribly low resolution and efficiency is high only for a very particular set of things.
Chat apps struggle when any level of resolution is called for. If a conversation delves into any degree of complexity or involves interpersonal dynamics then chat apps are not only inefficient, they can be downright destructive. A huge amount of relation debt can be accrued by having conversations over chat apps that would be better served over higher-resolution mediums.
An additional cost of chat apps is that they create an “always on” mentality. Without clear agreements around on/off hours and response times, a lot of issues can arise. Leaders get frustrated when employees don’t respond quickly. Employees may struggle to find heads down time for deep work or time to renew for fear that they’ll take too long to respond. Without clear agreements, chat can become a source of fear, energy loss, and decreases in employee satisfaction and productivity.
Tactically, chat apps are best used for straightforward exchanges around topics which already had a foundation created in a higher-resolution medium. This includes yes/no questions around specific aspects of a project, short tactical updates, or general inquiries around things that require tightly coupled coordination.
Chat apps also excel at culture building. With a robust set of tools for self-expression, chat apps provide an additional way for people to express themselves and connect (particularly younger generations).
Latency: Low/Medium (depends on the culture and person)
Resolution: Low
Most Efficient at:
Non time-sensitive, low resolution discussion (similar to chat apps)
Internal coordination activities (scheduling)
Communicating and coordinating with external parties
Email is basically chat for lower urgency items. Much of what was said about chat apps applies to email:
Email is low resolution, and therefore struggles with topics that are complex or require interpersonal insight
Having these exchanges over email presents a significant risk of creating relationship debt
You need clear agreements around on/off hours and expected response time for email to be used effectively
Email can be good for culture building
Email seems to be less abused at early stage companies, but often replaces chat as the dominant form of communication as companies scale. When that happens, the same pitfalls apply.
📽️ Loom & video tools
Latency: Medium
Resolution: High
Most Efficient at:
Updates and feedback on creative work that is not highly time-sensitive
Asynchronous video tools are creating some of the most exciting advancement in asynchronous communication. While asynchronous video tools have a higher latency, they allow for orders of magnitude more resolution while still avoiding the need for a meeting. In domains where chat and email suffer (topics with complexity or significant interpersonal dynamics), asynchronous video is a powerhouse.
This holds true as long as these conversations do not require a rapid series of back and forths If feedback can be given with high latency, the efficiency of asynchronous video is extremely high. If feedback needs to be clarified with a low latency, these tools suffer.
Deploying asynchronous video tools is most successful with clear rules of engagement. Given their novelty, teams can view them as “fun” and not give them the same intentionality they do chat apps and emails. It’s best to create clear agreements around:
Expectations for watching (how long to watch, how much attention to give it)
What warrants a response, how soon, and over what medium
All-in-all, these tools represent a promising advancement for asynchronous creative work.
Synchronous Communication Channels
🤝 Meetings
Latency: High
Resolution: High
Most Efficient at:
Laying a foundation for complex projects
Any activity requiring tightly coupled coordination across multiple (>3) parties
Addressing non-urgent decisions that require approval or feedback (batching)
Giving and receiving feedback on performance
Addressing sensitive topics
Relationship-Building
Meetings. We love them. We hate them. We have to have them.
Meetings are good for a lot of things. Most things even. The issue that most companies face with meetings isn’t whether or not they’re addressing the right issues with them, it’s that most companies suck at running meetings.
A fundamental truth about meetings: if you aren’t intentional about having great meetings, your meetings suck.
I don’t know a single person or company who has great meetings without being intentional about it. Point blank. Period. I’ll say it again: if you aren’t intentional about having great meetings, your meetings will suck.
Some suggestions for being intentional about having great meetings:
Every meeting should have an owner. This person is responsible for making sure the meeting stays on track to achieve its desired outcome.
Every meeting should have a goal. Every person involved in a meeting should know what the meeting is trying to achieve in advance. A goal is a good goal if at the end of the meeting every participant can agree on whether or not that goal was reached.
Every meeting should have an agenda. Everyone should be clear about how the meeting will be structured in order to achieve its goal. They should know what topics will be addressed and in what order. This allows participants to prepare.
Every meeting should have clear agreements on how individuals should prepared be for it. This can be determined at the company-wide, per department, or per meeting basis. Regardless of which you choose, every participant should be clear on how prepared they should be and with what.
Every meeting should end with a clear record of decisions made and action items assigned with a by when. If you can’t hold people accountable to the decisions made in a meeting, the meeting didn’t happen.
Every meeting should be recorded. Some companies video or audio record every meeting. Most record meetings in writing via notes. Whatever works for you. What’s most important is to record topics, goals, decisions made, and action items assigned. If you don’t have these, it’s as if the meeting didn’t happen.
It seems like a lot, but these simple rules will easily 10x the effectiveness of your meetings. They will almost definitely reduce the number of meetings you need to have. Given that meetings are the inescapable lifeblood of any coordination activity, you need to use them well.
📞 A powerfully underrated tool: unscheduled phone calls
Latency: Low
Resolution: Medium
Most Efficient at:
Urgent topics that are complex, involve interpersonal dynamics, or require significant context
One thing that amazing connectors reliably do: they call people out of the blue. When something urgent, important, or even just inspiring crosses their mind with someone to share, they pick up the phone and call.
This is one of the more underutilized tools at companies today. Too many companies will either delay semi-urgent items to a meeting or communicate them over suboptimal, low-resolution mediums. For the right topic, the unscheduled phone call can easily 10x your efficiency.
Designing Your Communication Architecture
As Founder & CEO, one of your most important jobs is designing, implementing, maintaining, and holding people accountable to your company’s communication infrastructure. Included in this are rules and guidelines for how to choose communications channels.
Creating a communication architecture is part art and part science. Here are some important considerations as you design yours:
What is the minimum-viable scaffolding of meetings to create alignment across the various stakeholders and functions of your organization? Consider management meetings, team kickoff meetings and retros, and 1<>1 cadences.
What are your rules for ensuring meetings are exceptional at your organization?
What are rules for what times meeting are allow and what times are reserved for heads down time? How do these rules vary across departments? Consider Paul Graham’s Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule to be required reading for this.
What are the rules for the use of different communication channels?
What things should be discussed synchronously vs. asynchronously?
What constitutes something that is best saved for a recurring meeting?
Something that requires an ad hoc meeting or phone call?
What is a good candidate for asynchronous communication?
What are the rules for asynchronous communication? When are people expected to be on? What are expected response times per medium?
What belongs in chat vs. email (vs. loom if you use a video tool)?
When should a topic be escalated from a low resolution channel to a higher resolution channel or from asynchronous to synchronous? What are indicators a topic is overly complex or too emotionally charged for low resolution channels?
Vice-versa, when can a topic be deferred to a lower resolution channel?
Modeling and Accountability as a Leader
Rules mean nothing if they aren’t adhered to. Once your infrastructure is defined (or at least the scaffolding in place, your infrastructure will be ever-evolving) your most important job is to model strict adherence to the rules.
Your next most important job is to hold your fellow leaders accountable to those rules.
Finally, your third most important job is to hold the rest of the company accountable to the rules.
As a leader, modeling goes a long way. Generally speaking if all of leadership is modeling the desired behaviors, the company will mirror that. The best way to do this is to create strict agreements around the behavior and how you want to hold one another accountable.
Shared Understanding and Trust in Effective Communication
When first implementing a communication infrastructure, it’s a good idea to initially create an over-reliance on running exceptional meetings. Many companies avoid doing this out of fear of falling into the trap of spending their entire life in shitty meetings. As long as your meetings are exceptional, an over-reliance on them at first is a good idea. Why?
Well run meetings achieve a few important things:
They enable the company to create a shared understanding around what is most important
They enable the company to create a shared understanding of how to work effectively together
They enable people to understand each other and develop trust
This creates a shared sense of the water everyone is swimming in. In the language of the framework above, this shared understanding enables people to accurately impute resolution in channels where it isn’t readily available. As shared understanding is created, challenging topics can be efficiently addressed in lower resolution channels. An initial overabundance of exceptional meetings eventually removes the need for many meetings altogether.
Trust is the lifeblood of communication, and exceptional meetings facilitate the process of building trust. This trust enables the organization to shift to lower latency communication channels. Organizations are able to maintain this low latency state as long as a minimum viable number of exceptional meetings are continued to maintain trust and shared understanding.
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