Internal Comms skill

Internal Communications

Internal communication fails in predictable ways: the wrong people hear it first, the message explains the decision but not the consequence, and nobody tests the draft before it reaches 2,000 inboxes. This skill treats an announcement as an artifact with a blast radius, a sequence, and a pass/fail quality bar — not as a writing exercise.

The three levers are who hears it in what order, what the message must contain, and which channel carries it. Get those right and tone matters far less than people assume.

When to use this skill

• Announcing a reorg, layoff, or leadership change where sequencing errors are unrecoverable
• Rolling out a policy change (RTO, expenses, security, performance process) that people must act on
• Communicating a product or system migration with a deadline and a required user action
• Structuring a recurring all-hands or weekly exec update that currently reads as a status dump
• Pressure-testing a draft before send: reading level, jargon density, missing elements
• Deciding channel and cadence for a multi-week change programme rather than a one-shot email

Inputs the skill expects

• The change itself: what is changing, effective date, whether it is reversible
• Audience list with impact level (high / medium / low) and rough headcount per group
• Draft text, if one exists (plain markdown or text is fine)
• Constraints: embargo, legal review, regulatory disclosure, market-sensitivity
• Available channels and which ones your org actually reads
• Who can answer questions after send, and where

Clarify First

Before generating, settle the inputs below. When one is missing or vague and would change the result, ask about it; when it wouldn't, use a sensible default and say which one you used.

• Blast radius — who is materially affected vs merely informed: this decides whether you need a cascade (manager-first) or a single broadcast, and cascades cost 3-5 days.
• Reversibility of the decision: reversible changes can be announced as proposals with a feedback window; irreversible ones must never be, because inviting input you will ignore is the fastest way to lose trust.
• Effective date and the required user action: sets every T-offset in the plan and determines whether the message is informational or instructional.
• Whether anything is legally or market-sensitive: embargo constraints override the ideal sequence and force simultaneous rather than cascaded delivery.

Ask about the two or three inputs that matter most for this request, not the whole list. If the user wants a result straight away, produce it and state your assumptions at the top.

Workflows

Workflow 1 — Audit a draft before it sends

Run this on every announcement that reaches more than ~50 people. It takes 30 seconds and catches the failure modes that generate the most follow-up questions.

1. Save the draft as JSON with title, body, audience, and channel.
2. Run the auditor. It scores five required elements (what changed, why, who is affected, what to do, where to ask), reading grade, jargon density, and hedging.
3. Fix every FAIL element. Treat WARN on reading grade as advisory unless the audience includes non-native speakers or frontline staff, in which case treat it as FAIL.
4. Re-run until the score clears 75.

python3 business-operations/internal-comms/scripts/announcement_auditor.py \
  --input business-operations/internal-comms/assets/sample_announcement.json \
  --min-score 75 --format text

Workflow 2 — Sequence a change communication

1. Describe the change and list audiences with impact and headcount.
2. Run the sequencer. It computes blast radius, orders audiences by a impact-then-influence rule, and assigns T-offsets in days relative to broadcast.
3. Review the manager-enablement step — if the plan says you need one and you skip it, managers learn about the change from their own reports, which is the single most common reorg comms failure.
4. Export the plan and assign an owner per step.

python3 business-operations/internal-comms/scripts/comms_sequencer.py \
  --input business-operations/internal-comms/assets/sample_change.json \
  --format text

Workflow 3 — Pick the channel

1. Characterise the message on six dimensions: urgency, complexity, audience size, sensitivity, whether it needs two-way discussion, and whether it needs a durable record.
2. Run the scorer to rank channels and see which are actively disqualified.
3. Use the top-ranked channel as the primary, and the highest-ranked durable channel as the system of record. Never let a chat message be the record.

python3 business-operations/internal-comms/scripts/channel_fit_scorer.py \
  --input business-operations/internal-comms/assets/sample_message_profile.json \
  --top 4 --format json

Decision frameworks

Blast radius → sequence pattern [PROVEN]

Blast radius is the count of people whose work or employment changes, not the count who receive the email.

Radius	Pattern	Lead time before broadcast	Manager enablement
1-10	Direct 1:1 conversations, then quiet team note	Same day	Not needed
11-50	Manager brief → team meetings → written follow-up	1-2 days	Required, 60-min session
51-250	Exec brief → manager brief + FAQ → all-hands → written	3-5 days	Required, with talk track + FAQ
250+	Add a pre-brief for informal influencers and a 2-week reinforcement cadence	5-10 days	Required, plus a manager Q&A channel

Escape hatch: legal embargo or market sensitivity collapses this to a simultaneous broadcast. When that happens, say so in the message — "we could not brief managers first because of disclosure rules" — rather than letting people infer carelessness.

The five required elements [PROVEN]

Every announcement of consequence answers these, in this order. A message missing any one of them generates a predictable class of follow-up question.

Element	Missing it produces	Minimum bar
What changed	"Wait, is this happening now or later?"	One sentence, in the first paragraph, with the effective date
Why	Rumour and worst-case theory	The actual reason, including the constraint that forced it
Who is affected	Every reader assumes it is them	Named groups, plus an explicit "if you are not in these groups, nothing changes for you"
What to do	Nothing happens	An action with a deadline, or the words "no action needed"
Where to ask	Questions go to the wrong people	A named human or channel, plus when they will respond

Message-type → structure [RECOMMENDED]

Type	Lead with	Length	Feedback window
Irreversible decision (reorg, layoff, shutdown)	The decision	300-500 words	None — do not solicit input
Reversible policy	The problem being solved	400-700 words	5-10 business days
Migration / deadline	The action and the date	200-350 words	Questions only
Celebratory / milestone	The outcome and who did it	150-250 words	None
Bad news (incident, miss)	What happened, in plain words	250-400 words	Post-mortem link

Cadence for a multi-week change [RECOMMENDED]

Announce once and people forget; announce weekly and they tune out. The pattern that holds: T-0 announcement, T+3 days FAQ update, T+1 week manager check-in, T+2 weeks progress note, T+4 weeks close-out. Five touches, decreasing in length. See references/change-comms-cadence.md for the full grid including reinforcement channels.

Anti-Patterns

The Broadcast Ambush

Mistake: Sending a reorg or policy announcement to all-staff without briefing managers first. Why it happens: Leadership fears leaks, and a simultaneous send feels "fair" and egalitarian. Instead: Brief managers 24-48 hours ahead with a talk track and an FAQ, and tell them explicitly what they may and may not repeat. A manager who cannot answer their team's first question loses standing that takes months to rebuild. If leak risk is genuinely severe, compress the window to 2 hours rather than eliminating it.

Burying the Decision Under the Reasoning

Mistake: Opening with three paragraphs of market context before stating what is changing. Why it happens: The author wants the reader to reach the same conclusion they did, so they reconstruct their own reasoning path. Instead: State the decision in sentence one, then the reasoning. Readers who disagree will read the reasoning more carefully, not less. Context-first structure reads as though you are building a case, which signals defensiveness.

The Fake Consultation

Mistake: Announcing a settled decision with "we'd love your feedback" attached. Why it happens: It softens the delivery and feels more collaborative than a flat directive. Instead: If the decision is settled, say so: "This is decided. Here is what we considered." If input can genuinely change the outcome, say what specifically is still open and by when. Solicited-then-ignored feedback is measurably worse for trust than no consultation at all.

Jargon as Cushioning

Mistake: "We are realigning our operating model to better leverage synergies across pods." Why it happens: Abstraction makes uncomfortable news feel less blunt to the person writing it. Instead: Write the sentence a person would say out loud. The auditor flags jargon density above 2% of words; anything above that on a high-impact message means the draft is hiding something, and readers will assume the worst thing it could be hiding.

No Named Owner for Questions

Mistake: Ending with "reach out with any questions." Why it happens: Nobody wants to volunteer their calendar. Instead: Name a person or a specific channel and a response commitment ("#change-rto, answered within one business day"). Unrouted questions become hallway conversations, and hallway conversations become the version of the message people remember.

Files

File	Purpose
scripts/announcement_auditor.py	Scores a draft on required elements, reading grade, jargon, hedging, and structure
scripts/comms_sequencer.py	Builds an ordered, T-offset communication plan from a change description and audience list
scripts/channel_fit_scorer.py	Ranks communication channels against a six-dimension message profile
references/announcement-archetypes.md	Eight announcement archetypes with structure, length, and worked openings
references/change-comms-cadence.md	Timing grids, reinforcement schedules, and manager-enablement content
assets/announcement-template.md	Fill-in template enforcing the five required elements
assets/comms-plan-template.md	Sequencing plan table with owner, channel, and T-offset columns
assets/sample_announcement.json	Runnable input for announcement_auditor.py
assets/sample_change.json	Runnable input for comms_sequencer.py
assets/sample_message_profile.json	Runnable input for channel_fit_scorer.py

Scope & Limitations

In Scope:

• Draft audits with scripts/announcement_auditor.py: the five required elements (what changed, why, who is affected, what to do, where to ask), reading grade, jargon density, hedging and structure, scored against a pass threshold
• Sequencing with scripts/comms_sequencer.py: blast radius, audience order by impact then influence, T-offsets relative to broadcast, and manager-enablement steps
• Channel ranking with scripts/channel_fit_scorer.py against a six-dimension message profile, including disqualified channels
• Frameworks for blast radius, message type and structure, and multi-week change cadence, plus announcement and comms-plan templates

Out of Scope:

• Sending, scheduling or tracking messages; the scripts do not connect to email, chat or intranet tools
• Board and investor communications (see personal-productivity/investor-update-generator/ and c-level-advisor/board-meeting/)
• Designing the change programme itself, beyond how it is communicated (see c-level-advisor/change-management/)
• Team-level project updates and status reports (see project-management/team-communications/ and project-management/execution/status-update-generator/)
• Legal review of layoff, regulatory or market-sensitive disclosures; the skill only flags that such constraints change the sequence

Important Caveats:

• The auditor detects required elements from cue phrases and estimates reading grade with an approximate Flesch-Kincaid formula. A pass means the parts are present, not that the message is accurate, fair or well judged.
• The jargon check uses a fixed word list, so domain terms your audience knows may be flagged and new buzzwords may be missed.
• Blast-radius bands, lead times and cadence are defaults. Audience impact levels and headcounts come from your input, and a legal embargo overrides the suggested sequence.