Sometimes organisations, particularly organisations that have a heavily technical component, develop their own internal language. It is a great way to build identity and even culture, and it is important that new members of the organisation get instructed on said specific language.

Nonetheless, there are two risks.

The first one has to do with belonging. As the company grows, more and more people will feel as outsiders, as they did not contribute to the vocabulary and the phrase book that is being used day after day.

The second one has to do with opportunity. The more specific and internally focused the language is, the more difficult it becomes to communicate with the external world. And people out there might feel that what the organisation is offering is not for them (even when it might actually be), that the opportunity cost to learn this new language is simply too high.

To mitigate the risks, a possibility is to take an outsider approach.

What is the impact the organisation wants to have in the community?
What are the shared values it stands for?
What are the things it seeks to improve?
Why should people (and employees) care?

And then, have reality checks around these topics with people that do not belong, but that should care (somebody would call them stakeholders). Do they get it? Do they actually care? If not, why?

The more the time passes, the more difficult it gets to do just this, so better start early in your journey.

Few things you might want to consider if you have something important to communicate inside your organisation over a certain amount of time. It might be a project, a change, a new tool, an improved process, a different structure.

First of all, be ready to reiterate the message. Do not expect everybody to be on the same page after you have sent out an email or updated the internal communication tool. It will take time, so prepare to have something to say about it in different occasions.

And (secondly), prepare to do so on different types of media. People absorb information in different ways. Some prefer to read, some to watch a video, some to watch an infographic. With modern tools, it is very easy to be creative in many forms, make sure you are considering the various ways you can reach your audience with.

Thirdly, pace your communication with a schedule. It’s not ideal to receive 27 notifications from you in 1 single day. As you are working on something that will take time, you should factor time in. What do you have to say today? What this week? What this month? What next month? After all, you’ll have different formats and occasions to talk about what you care, do not overload everybody on the starting line.

Finally, ensure some kind of space for feedback. Communication is never one way, as you progress in your journey, people will have things to say, questions to ask, doubts to raise. Set up occasions for this to happen, and be ready to follow up on what is said. Wait there: “follow up” does not mean “change your plans according to (what is said)”, I hope we are clear on that.

And since a couple of interesting words have (fortunately) crept in the paragraphs above, before you even start make sure you have very clear who your audience is (the whole company? for real?), and what the message you want them to get is (probably, not just how things are going with this or that).

Good luck!