Author
Antoine Buteau

Antoine Buteau

3 min read Free

Internal Communication Series #5: The Manager Cascade Is Infrastructure, Not a Forwarded Memo

The manager cascade is one of the most abused ideas in internal communication. Leadership makes a decision. Someone writes an announcement. Managers receive it shortly before employees do, sometimes with a note that says, “Please cascade to your teams.” The company assumes the job is done. It is not done.
3 min read Free

Internal Communication Series #4: Decision Communication and Decision Logs

Many companies make decisions twice. First, they make the decision in a meeting. Then they spend weeks remaking it through clarification, interpretation, Slack threads, side conversations, exceptions, and selective memory. This happens because the decision was spoken but not operationalized. A decision is not fully communicated when people hear the
3 min read Free

Internal Communication Series #3: Communication Altitude: Right Context, Right Fidelity

One of the fastest ways to create internal noise is to send the same context to everyone. It feels efficient. It feels transparent. It reduces the work of translation. One message, one version, one source. But companies do not operate at one altitude. The board needs a view of strategy,
4 min read Free

Internal Communication Series #2: More Communication Is Usually the Wrong Goal

When a company feels confused, the reflex is to communicate more. More updates. More Slack posts. More all-hands time. More manager emails. More meetings. More summaries. More context. More reminders. More transparency. Sometimes the company genuinely needs more communication. More often, “more communication” is a vague cure for a
4 min read Free

Internal Communication Series #1: Internal Communication Is the Company Operating System

Internal communication is usually treated as a messaging problem. The company needs an announcement. The CEO needs talking points. The all-hands needs a sharper narrative. Slack needs cleaner norms. Managers need a FAQ. Someone asks whether the message is clear, whether everyone has been informed, and whether the timing
3 min read Free

Managing Up Series #10: Making Your Work Legible to Leadership

There is a recurring frustration among capable operators: they do good work that goes unappreciated. They watch less competent peers get promoted, get high-visibility projects, and get recognized for things they built. Meanwhile their own contributions are invisible — not because they aren't real, but because they haven&
3 min read Free

Managing Up Series #9: How ICs Should Communicate With Executives

Individual contributors often behave differently in rooms with executives than in rooms with their peers. Some get hyper-formal, over-explaining their work in minute technical detail. Some go the other direction, over-simplifying to the point of meaninglessness. Some get deferential — pausing for approval before finishing sentences, hedging every
2 min read Free

Managing Up Series #8: When to Escalate and When to Handle It Yourself

One of the most common managing up mistakes is getting the escalation dial wrong in one direction or the other: either escalating too much (creating dependency, clogging your manager's queue, undermining your own authority) or too little (getting caught in problems you should have flagged, surprising your manager
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