Hey there, I'm Devin!
Most of the time you can catch me deep in the world of internal comms at Workshop (yes, the Happy Mondays folks!), and while I love AI, there are just some comms questions that need a human who really gets it… that’s me!
Hey Devin,
When it comes to sharing organizational changes, there always seems to be two camps among those creating the content.
Camp one: this needs to go to senior leadership only, who will then cascade it.
Camp two: everyone should get this — only an all-colleague email will do.
I’m acutely aware of inbox overload, but also of the need for colleagues to get info when they need it. (And let’s be honest — you can’t always rely on a busy manager to cascade.) How do I ensure the message lands without clogging up inboxes or upsetting stakeholders? We do have an intranet, and my initial instinct was to send an email to senior leadership and then post an article on the intranet for all colleagues.
Thanks, Devin!
Love how you broke this down and where you’re tracking already!
The way I see it, this isn’t really about deciding which camp is “right” — it’s about deciding how decisions like this get made. What I’d suggest is building out a simple framework that takes the guesswork out of it entirely, so these conversations don’t have to happen from scratch every single time… or be left up to preference, capacity, etc.
Here’s where I’d start: the content itself should drive the decision. Consider — when this message goes out, are employees going to have questions that need to be fielded by someone? If yes, that’s your signal that it probably needs to travel through leadership first. A manager who’s already looped in can handle follow-up in real time, in 1:1s, in team meetings, etc. That context matters. On the flip side, if it’s more of a need-to-know update that people can process on their own, you might not need the full cascade. Sending it through senior leadership in that case actually risks making something small feel bigger than it is. When a message comes from the top, employees read between the lines. It creates an expectation.
Your intranet suggestion is a good one too! Sending a targeted email to senior leadership and posting to the intranet for everyone gives you the best of both worlds in a lot of scenarios. Leadership gets the heads-up and context they need to answer questions; everyone else gets access to the information without it dropping into their inbox unannounced. It’s a nice way to layer your channels intentionally rather than picking a lane and hoping it works.
The last thing I’d note is to document the logic as you go — a decision making tree of sorts! Once you’ve worked through a few of these decisions, start writing down the pattern — if the message requires manager follow-up conversations, it goes through leadership first; if it’s informational and self-contained, it goes broader. I promise you don’t need a fancy framework document, just something you can point to so the two “camps” have a shared reference instead of a recurring standoff. And if you can get even one or two stakeholders to co-create that with you? Even better. It’s a lot harder to argue against a process you helped build! Best of luck!
