Transparency and great communication is one of the pillars of a great company culture. But it’s not as simple as sharing everything with everyone — the fact is, there is such a thing as too much information. It can distract and confuse priorities.
So how do you choose what to share, and how should you be sharing it?
Cascading messages is a way to clarify information and messaging at the leadership level of a company, and move it out toward the people who need to know in the most effective way. Another way to think about it: you’re spreading true rumors.
Read on for the who, what, when, where, and why of cascading messaging in an organization.
Where cascading messages begin
Company messaging should begin at the top leadership level. There are a variety of messages for which leadership is responsible, including:
- Company policy info/changes: think company holidays, working hours, processes for business expenses, etc.
- Changes to the business: updates to company goals, metrics, vision and the like
- Time-sensitive communications: upcoming events, urgent changes to products or services, etc.
- Staffing changes: upcoming employee leave and coverage, reorganization, etc.
- Good news: cascading messages are also a chance to improve morale!
Not everything in every category is appropriate to share out to everyone on every team. For example, imagine you’re running a service business with a hierarchical organization, and your IT department and your frontline service technicians never have any work overlap or collaboration. You probably don’t need to share the news about a service technician’s maternity leave with your IT department, but there are people who will need to know.
So how do you decide what to share, and who to share it with?
Ask the following questions:
- Who does the information affect?
- How will the information impact them?
- What is the bottom line to the organization?
From there, you’ll see a common sense solution to how your message should cascade. In the case of the service technician’s maternity leave:
- Who does the information affect? The service team, and any departments that have close relationships with them, like the sales team.
- How will the information impact them? In the case that you don’t yet have coverage for your technician’s leave, they will need to know — maybe your sales team has fewer slots to book customers until you find coverage, or someone on your leadership team can refer a contractor. If you do have coverage, your service team will need to learn about their new colleague and how they will be expected to support them.
- What is the bottom line to the organization? There will be a change in technician scheduling and personnel, projected to last for about 16 weeks, the length of the technician’s maternity leave.
How to cascade messages through your organization
Now that you know what your cascading message is, who needs to know, and why it’s important to communicate it, you can decide how to send a cascading message through your business.
It’s common for people to want to turn to the ease of asynchronous communication for cascading messages — think the @all in your company chat channel, or the email to the whole company list.
However common it is to communicate this way, we believe it’s a mistake. If there’s something worth sharing, it’s worth ensuring that the message gets across clearly, and doesn’t slip through someone’s overcrowded inbox. There are a few good ways to cascade messages.
Our team runs on EOS®, which means we run weekly Level 10 Meetings™, starting with the leadership team. The leadership team in any company should be the source of the “true rumors” you want to be spreading.
There are two main types of messages we cascade from the leadership team: cascading headlines and cascading messages.
1. Cascading Headlines
In the Level 10 Meeting agenda, “Headlines” is one of the agenda items. “Headlines” are pieces of information where the relevant decisions have already been made, and it’s just a matter of sharing information. If someone brings information to a meeting and it requires more discussion, it should be an Issue, not a headline.
When we go over the Headlines during the meeting, we make sure everyone understands it, and decide whether we should send the Headlines to any other teams. When a Headline is sent to another team, that means it’s automatically added to the Headline section of their agenda to clarify during their meeting.
We like cascading Headlines from leadership meetings to the relevant teams because people have live discussion and acknowledgement of a message. There’s also documentation of the cascading Headline as a part of the meeting agenda, so it is much harder for anything to slip through the cracks. When you consider sharing information via cascading headlines vs shooting out a mass email, the advantages in cascading headlines are clear!
2. Cascading messages
Cascading messages are one of the most important things to cover when you wrap up a leadership meeting. Your leadership team L10 meeting should be rich with Issues solved and decisions made, which generates information that must be shared to keep your business on the same page.
In Strety, you can create a cascading message in the moment by clicking the button during your meeting agenda at any time. You then write your message and assign it out to anyone on your meeting. Each assignee will get a To Do for them to cascade the message, so it doesn’t get lost in the sauce.
How to cascade messages: figure out who for how
While people get assigned a To Do to cascade information, the “how” of cascading the message is not necessarily proscribed. Sometimes the information only needs to go to one person outside of the original meeting; sometimes to many or even all teams. When going to complete your Cascading Message To Do, here are best practices and tips for sharing the info.
Cascading messages to other L10 Meetings
Oftentimes the easiest and least time-consuming choice is adding the information to your other L10 meetings. Oftentimes, your Leadership Team members will also lead other Level 10 Meetings, and they can share the information in those agendas.
If you use a tool like Strety that makes asynchronous communication easy, you can also write a Message in a team space sharing the information and inviting threaded discussion.
Cascading messages in a 1:1 meeting
f the message only pertains to a couple people, and it doesn’t benefit the team as a whole to communicate it, then it’s a good idea to include it in the 1:1 meeting a manager should be having with their direct report weekly. The manager can add it to their 1:1 agenda and consider their To Do completed.
You should cascade the following types of messages in a 1:1 meeting setting:
- Performance issues
- Promotion opportunities
- Compensation changes
- Role change
If there’s a message that you share with a whole team but also want to discuss on an individual level, you can add a Headline to that team, and then create and Issue from that Headline and send it to your 1:1 agenda. This way, you’re making sure to not only cascade the message, but discuss it at the right level of depth with every person involved.
Cascading messages company-wide
For messages that should be cascaded company-wide, but don’t have any time-dependencies, you can use a tool like Strety to write a Message to the whole company and add everyone in the company as subscribers. This makes sure the information is documented, accessible, and doesn’t depend on real-time communication — something we love about asynchronous communication.
If you have a message from the leadership team that will impact your entire company, and there will be negative consequences to people finding out at different times, consider holding an all-hands meeting to go over the information.
Common sense will guide you as to whether an all-hands meeting is necessary. If you’re changing your holiday policy to add an additional Friday off prior to a Monday policy, it won’t harm people to learn about it at different times and cascade it to various L10 agendas.
But if you have some seriously impactful news, like your company is being acquired by a competitor, it’s a good idea to communicate the information as clearly and as close to simultaneously as you can manage. This will help reduce rumors and anxiety that can arise when there are whispers instead of clear communication around big news.
It’s easy and intuitive to cascade messages in Strety
If you don’t have a business operating system and consistency in your meetings and communications, Strety makes it easy for you to get started!
Use intuitive, customizable Level 10 meeting agendas and agenda templates that automatically update and allow your team to collaborate before you meet. Comprehensive EOS® software is the easiest, most intuitive way to promote transparency and accountability in your business.
If you want to test drive better organization and communication, click here for a free trial of Strety. If you want to learn more and get a VIP tour of the product before you dive in, book time with a Strety team member here.
Happy cascading!