Why Your Product Management Comms Aren't Landing with Your Coworkers
On tailoring your message, repeating yourself and building an internal comms strategy
Despite coaching PMs across teams and companies there are weeks where similar themes crop up and it feels like something's in the air. This week, PMs across the board are feeling frustrated that their teams aren't hearing what they're saying.
“I feel like I have to repeat myself over and over again.”
“My team is asking me questions after I’ve shared all the info in a meeting!”
“I’m spending all of this time putting product specs together and I’m pretty sure no one has read it.”
Yikes.
In the remote-first world we live in, there are challenges to how we communicate, no doubt. The distribution, timezone and technical challenges are real. But thats why now more than ever we need to spend MORE time optimizing our internal communications. And why we need to treat our coworkers like our customers.
Coworkers as Customers
Think about when you launch something new. You don’t tell customers once, or in one place. You tell them about your product or service in a manner that feels authentic to them - social media, email, ads, etc. If you have a strong strategy, you have a multi-channel, targeted, strategic way of getting your message across. It’s advertising 101.
Often, I fail to see PMs advertising their message for coworkers in the way they do for their customers. Your coworkers are also consumers. And they too have preferred ways of digesting and internalizing information. Some like slack, some treat email as their source of truth. Others don’t hear anything until you’ve said it more than once.
The moment you take the time to think about how to reach coworkers in strategic ways, you unlock an internal communications strategy that asserts you as a clear, concise leader.
A mini comms plan
I advise my coachees to create a mini comms plans, say when there’s a new process being introduced or a new product rolling out. For example…
Let’s say you’re introducing a new bug triaging process…
Start by outlining a brief that explains…
Problem
Solution
What it looks like
Then identify your coworkers that need to know…
Development team
Customer support team
Sales team
Build on that and identify where you’ll introduce the process and how
Development team
Preferred Communication: Meeting & Slack
Share the process verbally in standup at the beginning of the week
Send the brief of the new triaging process on slack
Ask the engineering manager to review the brief in the dev team meeting
Customer support team
Preferred Communication: Meeting & Email
Invite support agents to a meeting to review the process and ask questions
Send the brief out over email after the meeting
Security team
Preferred Communication: Email
Send the brief out over email and solicit questions
I hear you objecting and saying wow Jori, this feels like…a lot of work. You’re not wrong.
But you know what’s more work and mental load? Feeling immensely frustrated that your message isn’t landing. Tools like ChatGPT can literally do the execution work for you. Load your brief into the prompt and ask for different versions for email, slack, meetings, etc.
When you take the time to think about how to reach different people, your message will stick. Period. And don't be scared to repeat yourself. Just because people heard something once doesn't mean they were able to internalize or act on it. Remember, it’s like advertising. People need to see and hear things more than once.
By treating your coworkers as customers and tailoring your communication approach accordingly, you can foster collaboration, trust, and ultimately, drive alignment more quickly.
And in time, your customers coworkers will hear you.