The symptoms
- Important information discovered too late.
- Two people doing the same work, or nobody doing it.
- Instructions that change depending on who you ask.
- Decisions made in meetings that half the team never hears about.
- Messages, emails and channels overflowing, with nothing to be found.
The real causes
Everything happens out loud
A decision made in a meeting or in a corridor only exists in the memory of those who were there. Those absent will never know, and those present will remember it differently.
Too many channels, no reference
Email, chat, meetings, shared docs: information is everywhere, so it's nowhere. Nobody knows where the authoritative version lives.
Fuzzy roles
When nobody knows who's responsible for what, nobody knows who to tell. Information gets stuck.
A direction that isn't shared
Without a strategy everyone knows, each person judges differently what's important to pass on.
What actually works
- A single source for what's authoritative: strategy, offers, methods, decisions. Everything else can circulate anywhere; this can't. See why company wikis fail, and how to avoid it.
- Written decisions at the end of every meeting, visible to those concerned. See effective meetings.
- Clear roles, so everyone knows who to tell and who to ask.
- Short rituals: a fifteen-minute weekly check-in beats a long monthly meeting.
- Simple channel rules: what goes by email, by chat, in meetings.
The trap to avoid: adding one more communication tool. The problem is almost never a missing tool, but the lack of a single authoritative place.
Communication and AI
AI adds a new difficulty: everyone asks it for answers based on their own version of the business, and contradictory documents go out to clients. The fix is the same as for people: a single source that everyone's AI draws on. See structuring your business with AI.
For all team problems: the 10 most common team problems.