What Happened
A piece in PR Daily is arguing that internal communicators have spent decades operating like publishers: producing polished newsletters, managing editorial calendars, and measuring success by whether content went out on time. The argument is that this model is broken. The better model, the article says, is thinking like a product manager: obsessing over whether employees actually understand and act on information, not just whether they received it.
The Communication Angle
Here is the core failure the article is pointing at. Internal communicators have been measuring the wrong thing for years. Open rates. Send times. Content output. These are production metrics. They tell you nothing about whether a single employee changed their behavior or made a better decision because of your message. Hitting send is not communicating. It is broadcasting. There is a difference.
The product manager mindset fixes this by reorienting the entire goal. A product manager asks: what does this person need to do, and does my product help them do it? Applied to communication, that question becomes: what does this employee need to understand, and does my message actually get them there? That is a harder question to answer, which is exactly why most people avoid it.
What makes this analysis sharp is that it identifies a structural problem, not a skill problem. Internal communicators are not failing because they write badly. They are failing because their success criteria are wrong. You cannot optimize your way to effective communication if you are optimizing for the wrong outcome. A beautifully written newsletter that no one acts on is a failure dressed up as a win.
The practical application here is straightforward. Before you write anything for an internal audience, name the behavior you want to change. Not the information you want to share. The behavior. "After reading this, people will submit their expense reports within 48 hours" is a goal. "After reading this, people will understand our new expense policy" is not. One of those leads to a message that works. The other leads to a message that lands in an inbox and dies.
This is also a leadership lesson, not just a communication lesson. The organizations where internal communication actually works are the ones where leaders hold communicators accountable for outcomes, not output. If your internal comms team is being measured on newsletter quality and distribution frequency, you have already built the wrong system.
This is exactly the kind of scenario I break down in Say It Right Every Time. The chapter on audience-first messaging gives you a framework for diagnosing whether you are communicating to inform or communicating to move people. Those are two completely different modes, and most professionals never stop to choose between them. The chapter walks you through a before-you-write checklist that forces the behavior question front and center, every time.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Key Takeaway
Before your next internal communication, write one sentence that completes this prompt: "After people read this, they will (specific action) by (specific date)." If you cannot complete that sentence, you are not ready to write the message. Go back and define what you actually need people to do, then build the communication around that.
