Workplace Communication: A Founder’s Journey
Abesh Thakur
Mar 8, 2024
Understanding work cultures across startups and mega corporations is a unique experience. At our previous company, we prioritized innovation, creating standards, and user satisfaction. Processes and pre-defined roles took a backseat, but wearing multiple hats teaches you a lot of things.
Acquisition by Facebook also brought an information overload. Suddenly, frameworks, alignment, and clear communication became paramount. Collaborating effectively across a massive organization presented new challenges. While standups and quick chats remained crucial, we had to adopt "big company" strategies to keep everyone informed and moving in the same direction.
Chat threads, meetings, and standups were still critical in our startup. However, stakeholder alignment and keeping everyone on the same page required strategies learned only at billion-scale.
At That Works, we spoke to hundreds of PMs and leaders. We found that workplace collaboration is suboptimal, and the overabundance of SaaS apps creates data silos that takes lots of manual processing to break down.
Key learnings:
Timely Communication: Once an organization reaches a certain size, timely communication becomes key and today this is messy. This is more important (And messier) in remote and hybrid workplaces.
Meetings: Let's face it, nobody loves them. But let's also be honest - they're still essential. The problem lies in overusing them. Constant DMing, impromptu team huddles, and large, all-hands meetings might feel efficient in the moment, but they often waste valuable time for most attendees. We need optimized communication frameworks that cater to specific needs and respect everyone's time.
Transparency: This is the holy grail that everyone craves, yet it's often sorely lacking. Imagine having a bird's-eye view of what's happening across the company, not just your immediate bubble. This 30,000-foot view is crucial for strategic decision-making and avoiding context-switching chaos. As a PM in a large corporation, I spent half my time piecing together information just to stay on track. We need to do better.
At That Works, we’re passionate about solving these problems. Stay tuned as we learn more!