Leverage Weekly #56 - Open communication

tl;dr - Lines of communication can be expanded outside the traditional hierarchy

For an organization to function effectively, the people inside the organization need to have the right information at the right time. Without that information, they won’t be able to make good decisions and the organization will suffer. External transparency helps, since anything communicated to the outside is also communicated, by default, to the inside as well.

Clear and candid external communication, however, is not enough. People inside an organization need a lot more information about what the organization is doing than people on the outside, and frequently need it more promptly. As a result, it is important to set up an organization so that internal information can be routed to the right people, making it possible for decision makers to make good decisions quickly.

Typically, organizations are set up to route information hierarchically. People lower down in the hierarchy route information upwards. People higher up pass relevant information down to subordinates. This system can work if people in a given part of the hierarchy know everything they need to know, but breaks down if input is needed from the outside, for instance, from the public, or even from people in other parts of the organization.

An alternative is to open up lines of communication, making it possible for people to see and comment on most of what is happening in an organization. If one is using Teams or Slack, for instance, one can have all channels be set to “Public” and thus available to all team members. Some information will need to be kept private, for instance, the personal information of prospective hires. But beyond that, one can strive to have as much information, especially about important decisions, available for everyone to see and comment on.

Open lines of communication can have obvious benefits. The more people have access to information, the better they can use it. The more conversations they can be a part of, the easier it is for people to provide useful input. Not infrequently, someone outside of regular hierarchical lines has information essential to making a good decision. With more people seeing more of what is going on, there is a greater chance that information can go where it needs to go so good decisions can be made.

Obviously, however, implementing open communication in practice is difficult. System and structure are necessary. Since it is not possible to share everything, people will need to make good choices about what information is useful to transmit. In order to prevent information overwhelm, people will need to develop the practices to prevent themselves from getting sucked into every conversation. This can be aided by good information systems (e.g., a well-organized Slack), as well as an understanding of what role they should be playing when interacting with information of different types.

This last point is important. When people are invited to observe communication, and even to participate, they can lose track of who is supposed to be in charge and how decision making is supposed to work. It’s important to have people understand that open communication does not necessarily imply communal decision making. People can still be in charge of making decisions in accordance with their original roles; complementarily, then, if one is observing or participating in communication where one is not the decision maker, it’s important to keep that in mind.

Open communication requires both discipline and trust. When decision making processes can be seen and scrutinized, people will see many decisions, and even many pieces of information, that they disagree with. Correcting everything at once, immediately, is not feasible, and people will not agree on how everything should be run. Hence it is important for people to understand how the entire system is meant to work and what they can do to correct misinformation within the system or affect or impact decision making.

Lines of communication can be expanded outside the traditional hierarchy.

Last week, we continued helping the Quantum Biology Institute solicit comment on its proposed budget for 2025 and began setting up the Institute’s purchasing process. Oliver designed a purchasing system meant to help us get the best of three worlds—speed, cost, and quality. We did at least one test with the QBI team live and expect that after more discussion and testing, we’ll have a great system that everyone likes using.

The purchasing process is actually a perfect example of the benefits and challenges of having open lines of communication within an organization. Tons of people have and can find useful information about which instruments the Institute should purchase, from mundane items like computers to specialized instruments like autoclaves. (Autoclaves are pressure cookers used to sterilize equipment and samples in biological research.) There is thus a great benefit to having everyone be able to comment.

On the other hand, people also have very different priorities and ways of evaluating options. The QBI team, in addition, has had very bad experiences with purchasing processes in the past. However, people also have very different priorities and ways of evaluating options. It will take some discipline and practice, as well as building trust between the scientists and operations, in order to have a system that works well for everyone.

Otherwise, the team continued supporting QBI, with Melinda advising on legal and Geoff helping to coordinate the team overall. One notable milestone was Geoff and Melinda completing and sending out the Research Collaboration contract to set up Michael Montague working as a Visiting Scientist at JCVI, which will be QBI’s satellite microbiology lab. It’s great to see the Institute coming together as quickly as it is.