Most communication problems aren’t complicated — they’re just easy to overlook until they’ve already cost you something. Here are five that come up constantly, and what to do about each one.
1. Waiting until there’s a problem to have a communication plan
By the time you need a crisis response, it’s too late to design one calmly. A basic plan — who speaks, what channel, how fast — takes an hour to build and saves days of scrambling later.
2. Letting everyone speak for the organization
Inconsistent messaging usually isn’t a writing problem — it’s a governance problem. When five people can all respond publicly with five different framings, the inconsistency itself becomes the story.
3. Writing for yourself instead of your audience
Internal jargon and internal priorities creep into public communication constantly. Before anything goes out, it’s worth asking: does this make sense to someone with zero context on our internal situation?
4. Going silent instead of saying “we don’t have an answer yet”
Silence reads as avoidance, even when it’s really just caution. A short, honest “we’re aware and looking into it” buys real time without looking like you’re hiding.
5. Treating communication as a one-time task instead of an ongoing function
A press release here, a social post there — without any consistent throughline, none of it compounds. The organizations that build real reputation over time treat communication as an ongoing practice, not a series of disconnected tasks.
None of these require a big budget to fix — just intention. If you want to talk through where your organization actually stands on any of these, book a free 15-minute check-in.
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