Direct Communication Channels

Every team should have clear communication guidelines that are taught and enforced for all employees. Teams should make a cultural communication guideline document that lists out the channels they uses to communicate and how each team member is expected to use them. By defining how the team should communicate it becomes easier to enforce the cultural norms you want and accelerates how quickly new team members can onboard into the culture. Check out this example from Proletariat: https://lnkd.in/drGPdH3T What should be in a Cultural Communication Guide? For the guide to be useful it should include at least three sections. By reading this document every employee should be on their way to becoming a great communicator with the rest of their team. 1. Choosing the Right Communication Channel Teams often use multiple channels—email, Slack, meetings. Clearly define which type of communication belongs where based on message content, urgency, and response needs. 2. Communication Channel Usage Guidelines Once a channel is chosen, the guide should outline how to use it effectively. This includes setting expectations for tone, timing, format, and best practices for emails, meetings, and other interactions. 3. Examples and Best Practices Include examples to show the guidelines in action, making it easier for employees to understand and follow. How do you use a Cultural Communication Guide? The two primary uses for this guide will be with existing teams and with new team members. For existing teams this should be used for creating consistency and agreement on how the team wants to communicate. For new employees it should be part of their training and onboarding. At Proletariat we would include this guide as part of the employee handbook, send it to new employees when they started, and also give a presentation covering these details as part of their onboarding. It is up to company leadership to decide how to enforce these guidelines. The way these are enforced, and how strictly, is also a major reflection on the culture of the team. Do not define these rules and then decide to not enforce them! How do you make a Cultural Communication Guide? Crafting a document like this should be a group effort with feedback from the full team. If there is no agreement on ways to communicate, use the creation of this guide to find compromises. The process of choosing how the team will communicate is a great step to improving efficiency across the team. The best way to start making this guide is to simply write down all the ways the team communicates now. Taking stock of the current communication practices of the team sets a good foundation for discussion around what areas of team communication are working well and what areas could be improved. This should be a living document, something that is updated regularly as your team grows and changes. I have found that certain communication styles can work well when a team is small but fall apart when a team is big. 

Have you ever been scolded for going over your boss's head to speak with their superior? Some managers believe all communication must flow through proper channels, meaning you should never speak to your boss's boss without going through your direct manager first. This antiquated approach to workplace communication is killing company culture. Just think about it, a manager reprimanding an employee for having a casual conversation with their line executive. Think about how this employee must feel, like they have betrayed some sacred hierarchy. The truth is, open communication cultivates connection. When employees at all levels can converse freely, it builds trust and community. Strict reporting lines breed secrecy and isolation. Organizations must evolve from command and control to open access. Information should flow freely, not trickle down select channels. We need to humanize how we interact at work. Here's why it's a problem: - It creates silos. - It demoralizes employees. Getting scolded for sharing your perspective makes you feel undervalued. You start questioning if speaking up is even worth it. This leads to disengaged teams who feel they have no voice. - It limits transparency. Restricting who can communicate with whom prevents important information from reaching leadership. Your boss's boss may have insights that your direct manager lacks. - It consolidates power. When managers tightly control the flow of information, it serves to solidify their status and influence. Healthy organizations recognize that good ideas can come from anyone, not just those at the top. The solution is to cultivate open lines of communication at all levels. - Institute skip-level meetings where employees regularly interface directly with leadership. This builds trust and alignment across the org chart. - Train managers to be receptive, not punitive, when employees reach out to senior leadership. Curiosity should be encouraged, not frowned upon. - Role model transparent communication from the top down. When senior leaders are accessible, it empowers everyone to speak up. It's time to challenge the fallacy that conversations must follow a preordained path. True leaders recognize that good ideas can come from anywhere, and seek to understand motivations before scolding and they actively foster connections across their organization. Fluid communication that crosses reporting lines is critical for an engaged, innovative workforce. https://lnkd.in/g7Rkg2br

Our engineering team works directly with customers in dedicated Slack channels. No middlemen 🙅♂️ When customers and developers can connect directly, it creates a cycle of immediate improvement. Our engineers witness problems firsthand, fix them faster, and build features based on actual usage patterns rather than guesswork about what customers might want. Once, a customer struggled with an EIP-712 transaction. The error wasn't obvious from our logs, but within minutes, our engineer identified the issue and helped them resolve it. We also spotted a recurring bug and built a minor feature update based on our findings. Not every company can or should expose its engineering team this way. It requires mature developers who communicate well, set clear boundaries around response times, and provide explicit documentation of feature requests versus quick fixes. The payoff is huge, though: engineers build with real users in mind rather than abstract personas. Our transaction success rates and reliability metrics have improved since implementing this system. Direct customer-to-engineer communication shouldn't be a revolutionary concept. It should be standard for infrastructure companies that are really serious about building solutions.