I believe the three main goals of internal communications can be separated into:

• setting context or gaining alignment
• setting or tracking goals
• recognition or gratitude

Many startup companies begin with a very ad hoc system of communication. When you have less than 10 employees, communication isn’t that hard. As the organization grows, it becomes harder just to keep people in the loop of everything that is going on. Additionally, it becomes necessary to institute a system for goal setting to ensure that everyone knows how they impact the organization. Lastly, as the organization scales beyond a few dozen people, the CEO’s ability to have a relationship with each employee becomes impossible and a system for recognition is also needed.

As a CEO, it surprised me when a team member would ask about our strategy or how I was thinking about a recent product launch. I thought what was talked about in an executive team meeting would roll down through the organization, but it didn’t. And as it turns out, saying something in one all-hands meeting a month ago is not enough!

By establishing a communications operating system for your company, you can get ahead of these issues.

In this guide, we’ll recommend ideas for:

1. Streamlining daily operations
2. Upleveling weekly meetings
3. Planning monthly check-ins
4. Setting annual meetings
5. Considering other stakeholders
6. Resources we love
7. Takeaways & next steps

It’s often said that the job of the CEO is to set strategy, put the best team he/she can on the field, and make sure that the company doesn’t run out of cash. I would add that CEOs must communicate their vision, the company‘s strategy, and institute a process for goal setting—all of which boils down to communication.

Getting everyone on the same page starts with setting expectations and priorities—and keeping everyone updated when things inevitably evolve.

Daily stand-up

While a daily stand-up is common for product and engineering teams, I recommend having a daily stand-up with your management team. After many years as CEO, I finally instituted this and saw firsthand how it changed the pace of the business and allowed my direct reports to unblock each other much faster.

If something needs to be urgently tackled, the daily stand-up can be a galvanizing force to accomplish this.

Dashboard/KPI notifications

Once the company has built out dashboards and instrumented BI tools, I recommend having a daily dashboard or the 1-2 most important KPIs sent out to the entire team via an email or slack message. This is an excellent way to get the entire team deeper into understanding the metrics of the business and tying those back to your goals.

Improve cross-functional collaboration by establishing consistent check-ins. Here are some standard meeting formats to consider:

All-hands

Many companies start out with weekly all-hands meetings and as they scale move toward monthly or quarterly. For as long as you can, I suggest keeping a weekly cadence. All-hands meetings should allow team members to engage either as presenters or through Q&A. Your company can also use this time to introduce new hires (especially new executives as they join the company).

CEOs can use this forum to reinforce company values, present and reiterate company goals, and share gratitude or recognize team members.

1:1s

Much has been written about how to conduct a good 1:1 meeting ([Ben Horowitz](https://a16z.com/2012/08/30/one-on-one/), [High Growth Handbook](http://growth.eladgil.com/book/the-role-of-the-ceo/insights-working-with-claire/)). I encourage CEOs to adopt a style for their 1:1 meetings and make your expectations on this meeting known to others. You should do 1:1s with some level of consistent frequency (avoid constant rescheduling or canceling) and consider doing skip-levels at least once a quarter.

Gratitude/recognition

Most companies have a few different ways of celebrating employee accomplishments (either related to business or values) so while the all-hands meeting is a great place for this, you could also consider multiple forums for recognition. Examples include a Slack channel to share gratitudes, a weekly email to share customer comments, and a monthly award.

For example, one of M13’s values is:

Here’s a gratitude about M13’s office manager Arbo Shah:

While executing left and right, he not only does it with a hysterical joke that often leaves me in tears, but he does everything with care.
Marie Sokolovsky, People & Culture Manager at M13

Letter from the CEO

An easy way to keep the company informed and increase engagement is for the CEO to send a [weekly email](https://medium.com/@gokulrajaram/the-weekly-ceo-e-mail-b5eaafcee6fa) outlining the items she is thinking about. This can be very informal—take 15-20 minutes to write; it can simply be a stream of consciousness. This email is a great way to highlight the priorities of the week ahead and share insights into a sudden change in metrics or news in the marketplace.

Executive Team meeting

The meeting a CEO has with her direct reports usually has many purposes—it’s a great forum to make sure that each function knows what the other is doing and to debate and/or align on key strategic issues. Ideally someone (like an executive assistant) is tasked with taking notes and sending out action items.

When you and your team are sprinting, it’s important to keep the bigger picture in mind as you assess your accomplishments and milestones.

Goals

Any system of goals (OKRs, OGSM, etc.) will have guidelines around goal setting, tracking, and scoring. At least monthly, revisit goals to track status and align whether initiatives should be reprioritized.

At the early stages, a long list of goals can feel like progress, but activity doesn’t equal results.

Keep an eye toward continuing to narrow your company’s focus. Importantly, scoring your progress against a goal will ensure discipline that the company sets realistic goals and can ladder into performance management.

Financial planning/budget review

Outside of reviewing KPIs, reviewing the financial plan with your management team can help increase awareness of the company’s financial position and drive more informed discussions around capital allocation.

Be sure to take advantage of all the automated tools and resources that are available for startups. For example, M13 portfolio company Rho aims to provide more flexibility with its corporate credit card.

In addition to being disciplined about monthly check-ins, you’ll want to zoom out to analyze your startup from a 10,000-foot view.

Strategy and org planning

At least annually, your executive team should discuss and align on company strategy and review your long-range financials, market position relative to competitors, and long-term product roadmap.

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Formal feedback

Regardless of how informal feedback is shared within your organization, you may want to consider having formal feedback sessions built into your operating system. We used to dedicate a half day during our executive offsites for 360-degree feedback—this process takes a good amount of prep work but has huge ROI.

Once you’ve gotten your internal communications OS up and running, remember to think about what matters to your startup’s other stakeholders. From your investors to your customers, each group of stakeholders will likely need a communications plan.

Goal setting/scoring

Most startups could use a lot more discipline around goal setting. Revisiting goals even monthly may not be enough in a dynamic startup. Regardless of the system your company uses, make sure that you’ve weaved your goals and scoring of those into the rest of your communications OS.

Board meetings/investor updates

Depending on whether you have a board or not, consider sharing your investor updates with your team. We used to flip through board slides at our all-hands meeting and allow team members to ask questions.

Consider hosting “meet and greet” sessions to introduce your investors to the rest of your team.

Take Shef, a homemade food marketplace that invited M13 Partner and Head of Brand Christine Choi to speak with its affinity group for women.

“Having Christine take the time to meet with us was extremely validating and motivating for our team members,” says Leila Elamine, Shef’s head of community, culture, and media. “It was such a unique opportunity to be able to ask a partner questions about her professional life and have her answer so candidly. Everyone really opened up.”

It was incredibly moving and hopeful to be able to speak with a woman who helped blaze the trail for us. Personally, I think it gave a lot of us a North Star to work toward.
Leila Elamine, Shef’s head of community, culture, and media

Customer advisory council

Whether it’s a formal customer advisory board or a less formal way to keep the customer top-of-mind, you have to be intentional about engaging with customers in order to build a customer-focused company.

When it comes to building your own communications operating system, getting other perspectives is key. Here are some books and articles that I've found especially useful:

• Running an All-Hands
  Gokul Rajaram draws on his time at Square to cover frequency (weekly until your startup has a few hundred people) and format (think three acts). He also notes that if “attendance slowly but perceptibly drops each week, you know the content is not clicking, and you need to pivot and make it more compelling."
• The Weekly CEO Email
  But even the most efficient all-hands meeting isn’t enough, Gokul says. In your weekly email, highlight what’s top of mind, update everyone on the company's performance, and more.
• High Growth HandbookLearn how to scale startups from 10 to 10,000 people, including how to manage a board, recruit an executive team, and more. [Elad Gil]
• The Great CEO WithinThis former founder now coaches the CEOs of Brex, Coinbase, Flexport, Postmates, and other leaders. Brush up your individual habits, discover how to do an energy audit, and more. [Matt Mochary]