If a message tells employees what changed but never tells them what to do next, is it communication or is it just documentation?
An informing message answers what is happening. A connecting message answers what does this mean for me, and what am I supposed to do about it. Most corporate change comms is the first one, dressed up with a template, a leadership quote and a nicer font, and mistaken for the second.
I use Internal Communication Framework 2.0, the methodology from my book, to catch this before it ships. It moves a team through an appreciative and evaluation approach, understanding where the organisation’s communication culture genuinely stands, before implementation and assessment. Inside it sit the 7Ps: Plan, People, Process, Practice, Platform, Placement, Pitch.
Almost every flat announcement I’ve reviewed nails the Plan and the Pitch and skips People and Practice entirely, has this been built around the audience, does it fit their culture and context. That’s the gap between a message that gets read once and forgotten, and one that changes what someone does on Monday morning.
Pull up your last major announcement. Which of the 7Ps did it skip, and did anyone notice before it went out?
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Most corporate change communication is information wearing a leadership quote and a nicer font. It tells people what happened. It never tells them what to do next, or why it matters to them specifically. My Internal Communication Framework 2.0 runs every message through 7 checks before it ships: Plan, People, Process, Practice, Platform, Placement, Pitch. Almost every flat announcement I’ve reviewed nails the Plan and skips People completely. Which of the 7Ps did your last big message skip?
Suggested hashtags: #InternalComms #ChangeManagement #EmployeeExperience #ICInsights #Intraskope
5. Are weekly communication updates a discipline or a confession?
LinkedIn Newsletter Article
When a communication team defaults to sending updates every week regardless of whether there’s news, what are they really telling you?
Usually, that they don’t trust the plan, or the audience, enough to go quiet. Cadence should track the emotional and informational state of employees, not a fixed calendar. Early in a change, when uncertainty is highest, frequent short touchpoints matter even with little to report, because silence gets filled with speculation. Once things stabilise, repeating settled information stops reassuring people and starts reading as noise, or worse, as a sign something’s being hidden.
The dial should be set by the size and visibility of the change, how directly it touches pay, role or location, existing trust, and the pace of decisions upstream. A fast-moving restructure earns weekly or tighter contact. A multi-year culture shift is better served by a handful of high-quality moments tied to real milestones, not a drumbeat that runs out of things to say by week three.
Falling open or attendance rates are rarely an audience that’s stopped caring. They’re usually an audience telling you the cadence has outrun what they need.
Is your current cadence set by what the audience needs, or by what makes the comms team feel like it’s doing something?
