Lesson 27: Culture Telephone Game

The Telephone Game: Why Every Hire Makes Communications More Difficult

Strong communication is one of the most important qualities of any successful company. Yet, it is one of the most misunderstood and mishandled processes in a growing business. As your operations expand, you bring on more people to execute the growing list of demands and responsibilities needed to achieve success at scale.

When you have more people on your team, you instantly have more variables to deal with operationally. With added complexity, it becomes far too easy for knowledge and information to fall through the cracks, leading to a communication gap that disrupts productivity. Such a breakdown of communication can often lead to work efforts being duplicated, not meeting expectations, or not being done at all.

Whatever the outcome, it all stems from a lack of clear communication. And as the leader of your company, you must assume responsibility for creating a culture of effective communication. Something as simple as a misunderstanding in communication could spiral down towards a huge gap in knowledge concerning operational strategy or even something like a pivot! The impact of such mistakes is costly for most organizations, but for a start-up it can make the difference between death and survival. That’s why you must focus on reducing the marginal cost of communication. There’s no doubt you want your company to grow, but achieving such growth and the many rewards that come with it is contingent upon building a world-class team capable of communicating in an effective and efficient way over the long term.

Start-ups that experience fast growth see the breakdown of communication happen much faster since they continuously need to re-examine their procedures and systems for sharing ideas and making sure that everyone on the team is on the same page. The higher the number of people in your company, the higher the risk of misinformation and disinformation. Each additional employee adds a whole new layer of complexity to your business operations, which makes it more likely that communication will break down. Whether it’s a lack of knowledge of pre-established norms or of best practices, new hires are often unaware of how your company has done things before they got there. When you bring on new people at a fast pace, you have less time to build the rapport with them in a way that builds trust and openness. If there is no trust, there is no progress. If there is no progress, you might as well give up now because your start-up will not thrive.

So, you need to drive communication on your team. One way is by making sure you hire people who are high performers and therefore capable of achieving a lot without the constant need for guidance or direction. If you have someone who can produce the results of two or three other employees, then you need not hire additional people who would otherwise clog up your lines of communication and impact productivity.

Providing tools that drive communication can also help your business. Establishing clear channels of communication, such as online chat, email, or in-person meetings is crucial to keeping everyone on the same page, since different situations call for different communication approaches. No, you need not have another hour-long team meeting to discuss clean-kitchen mandates that could be communicated more effectively over a quick email. Conversely, you should be having team meetings regarding anything strategic or substantial, such as a new hire, a pivot, or a product change. Understanding where the biggest communications gaps and misalignments are part of the solution to improving how your team interacts.

As you bring on more people on your team, think closely about how the culture, capabilities, and needs of your organization align. Figure out what methods of communication work best for the people you have and how those approaches translate into action and impact within your team. You shouldn’t fear team growth, but what you should beware of is a communication breakdown. Without clear, strong, ongoing channels of communication, you will fight an uphill battle.

In the next few lessons, we will drill down on how to build specific types of functional teams. The knowledge you have gained regarding team communication will help you think about and understand the nuances and intricacies of building different groups.