Jo Scard has watched countless organisations mistake “we sent the email” for “we communicated” – and the confusion that follows when they’re wrong. As CEO and founder of Fifty Acres, she’s coined a term for it.
The first thing to focus on is clarity before communication. One of the biggest misconceptions is that internal communication is about sending information. But it’s about creating shared understanding.
Before anything goes out, ask: what do people actually need to know, what do they need to understand and what do they need to do differently afterwards?
EAs are often incredibly close to leadership, which gives them a unique vantage point. They can usually see where priorities are shifting, what executives are trying to achieve and, importantly, where messages get diluted as they move through an organisation.
The challenge is that many are expected to translate strategy into communication without being involved early enough in the strategic conversation itself. That’s where organisations create unnecessary risk.
The trap of distributing updates
The biggest mistake I see is assuming communication is complete because the email has been sent, a leader has spoken once at a town hall or issued an announcement. In reality, that’s only the beginning. Communication only succeeds when people understand what it means for them, why it matters and how it changes the way they work.
When organisations treat internal communication as a distribution exercise, they create what I call false alignment. Everyone has the same information – but everyone walks away with a different interpretation. That’s when duplicated work, inconsistent decisions and competing priorities start showing up, with teams unknowingly pulling in different directions.
Raising the alarm without it looking like overreach
If you notice confusion or duplicated work happening because a message hasn’t landed clearly, become a source of insight rather than opinion.
Instead of saying “I don’t think people understood the message,” frame it around observable patterns: “I’ve noticed several teams are interpreting this differently,” or “We’re receiving the same questions repeatedly, which suggests there may be some uncertainty.”
That shifts the conversation away from criticism and towards helping leaders make better decisions. EAs often see across the organisation in a way few others do and that’s valuable intelligence. And raising it is helping leadership succeed, not second-guessing them.
What a good rollout includes
As new financial year priorities roll out, most organisations are good at explaining what they’re doing. Not many explain why they’re doing it, why now, what success looks like or what they need from their people.
People don’t just want information, they want context. If you’re asking teams to embrace new priorities or change how they work, they need to understand how those decisions connect to the organisation’s broader direction.
The other thing that’s often missing is consistency. A strategic message isn’t something announced once and forgotten. It should appear consistently across leadership meetings, manager conversations, project updates and day-to-day decision-making. That’s how organisational priorities become organisational behaviour.
If this has landed on your desk with no formal training
If you’re finding this difficult, it’s because internal communication is a genuine professional discipline. People underestimate it because everyone communicates every day. But communicating strategically across an organisation, particularly during change, sits at the intersection of leadership, psychology, organisational culture and business strategy.
Resist the temptation to become the person who writes the emails. Instead, ask the more strategic questions: who needs to hear this, what concerns are they likely to have, how will we know they’ve understood, what questions might they ask next, and how will managers reinforce this message? Those questions move communication from administration into organisational leadership.
And where an organisation is navigating significant change, growth or restructuring, don’t assume internal communication can simply be absorbed into someone’s existing role. The cost of getting it wrong (confusion, disengagement, duplicated effort and failed implementation) is almost always greater than investing in getting it right from the start.
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