The #1 Way To Prevent Internal Comms Disasters? Avoiding Assumptions

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place 

George Bernard Shaw

As I wrote in a previous article, assumption is the mother of many communication disasters. Whether it is the result of a ‘one-and-done’ mindset, poor planning, or a refusal to listen, making assumptions in communications can be catastrophic, with impacts on brand, reputation, and business performance. 

Here I’m going to look at five common cases of assumptions in communications, what’s dangerous about them, and what you should do instead to avert disaster and keep your employees aligned and engaged. 

1. ‘One-and-done’ approach

How many times have you confronted senior leaders with the (typically) bad results from an employee communication survey about a project, only to be told, ‘But we spoke about this at the last All Hands meeting’?

This illustrates a common misconception that because you have communicated a message once, it has been received and understood. In fact, the Marketing Rule of Seven (dating back to the 30s and backed by science) suggests that people need to hear a message seven times to retain it. Couple this with the rise of digital overload (and consequent amnesia – or the ‘Google effect’, as it is known) and our ability to retain information is weakening as its volume proliferates. 

Employees are no different to customers. They are subject to the same torrent of daily messages, of which your internal communications are just one of many. Assuming that telling them once is enough means you run the real risk that most of them simply won’t remember what you’ve told them, much less act on it. This can cause serious issues around prioritization, alignment, and collaboration, all of which affect strategy delivery. 

Instead, make message repetition, across a variety of channels, a core part of all your communication strategies and plans. As a former boss told me, “The moment you’re bored of saying it is the moment your audience starts listening.”

2. Not thinking it through 

The devil, as they say, is in the detail. And one of the things the devil does is reveal when programs or projects have made assumptions in place of properly thinking things through. 

A familiar reason behind this is a failure to engage internal and/or change communications teams early enough in the planning phase. Consequently, critical communication aspects of change are assumed, with potentially major consequences. 

Take this example from Lynn Zimmerman, Change Communication Strategist. 

“A company I worked with was less than a month out from launching its new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) when I was brought in. We were working on employee messages about how to log into the new system, and when I asked what a username would be at log in, IT told me it would be the employees’ company email address. 

“But this was a company that employed part-time frontline workers. I asked if they were planning on assigning email addresses to the high school students who worked the cash registers: silence. 

“We were three days before going live when they uncovered all the different systems and logins that employees would need to access the ERP. There were more than 10 different username formats!”

Thankfully, in this case, the story had a happy ending. But the issue could have been avoided by not making assumptions, bringing a communications expert or team in early (because we see across the organization and know the right questions to ask), and working through every tiny detail of the change together. 

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. 

3. Refusing to listen

One of the most dangerous assumptions that imperils communications is assuming that you know best, and therefore don’t need to listen. If you want an example of this in action, look no further than the surge in corporate Return to Office (RTO) mandates, with Amazon’s five days a week the latest to catch fire. 

One element that connects all these RTO orders is the lack of employee voice in the decision making. Employees are not being asked for their opinion, or listened to when they raise objections. 

When employees don’t feel listened to, they lose trust and belief in their leadership. This means talented people run for the door; retention, engagement, and productivity freefall, and your brand and reputation take a serious hit. 

To avoid this, the key is to listen to your employees. Not superficially through annual engagement surveys that change little. Create a culture of listening, where employees and their representative groups are consulted on business changes, large and small, on an ongoing basis. The more your people feel valued and respected, and the more they see their views acted on, the greater the effectiveness and impact of your communications will be. 

4. The comms mirror

If your organization is chaotic, your communications will be too. Similarly, if your business is structured, this will be reflected in your communications. What you cannot do is assume that your communications teams can help your company message your way out of not doing the work. 

International Women’s Day is a notable example of this. Every year, many organizations jump on the bandwagon, yet are quickly caught out by the Gender Pay Gap App. PR disasters like this don’t just nosedive your brand, they also cause your employees to be suspicious of all your proclamations. This creates major headaches when you’re trying to attract and retain the best talent. 

The good news is that the problem is easily fixed. Do the work. Walk your talk. Focus on communicating what you are doing – with proof points. And if you intend to do the work but haven’t done so yet, give a timeline and be clear about when future updates will be provided. Transparency increases trust, just as silence (or in this case, shouting without substance) erodes it. 

In the corporate world, as in life itself, you really can’t over-communicate. 

5. Assuming you know how your audience will respond  

This is a frequent assumption. As communicators, we are often privy to confidential company information before employees. Yet this curse of knowledge can hinder as well as help. Because we may have sat with information for a period, we assume other people know the same as we do. 

The result is we assume we know how employees are going to respond to certain messages, whether we see them as positive or negative. There is a risk that we underestimate or overestimate employee reaction to messages. In doing so, we leave our organizations unprepared to deal with the fallout, and put ourselves as communicators on the back foot, which is never a good place to be. 

The solution is to get out of our IC bubble, listen to employees (see Point 3) and (where possible) do some message testing to get a baseline of employee understanding and sentiment.

Early interventions can make all the difference as to whether your communications land successfully or not, and if your program or project sinks or swims. The stakes are too high to make assumptions. 

Preventing internal comms disasters: Don’t make an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me’

Clichés are clichés because they have a painful habit of being true. One of my favorites is that you should not assume, because doing so makes an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me’. 

Never is this truer than in communications, but with potentially huge ramifications. 

Thankfully, by planning, listening, and engaging with employees, we can avert disaster and set our organizations up for success.

With thanks to Lynn Zimmerman and Paul Harvey, Internal Communications Specialist, for their contributions.