Open, frank communication is the linchpin to teamwork. —Patrick Lencioni

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I ordered a new coffee maker last month.

It arrived yesterday.

Two months from order to delivery.

During those two months, I considered cancelling the order at least 10 times.

Not that I could even cancel the order.

My email requests for an update went unanswered by the company.

For weeks I heard nothing from them.

Then a single update, then more weeks of silence.

I had no idea when… or if… the order would ship.

I considered calling my credit card company to reverse the charge.

Every time I thought about the order, I was frustrated.

Finally last week I got an update.

They apologized for the lack of communication.

They were focused on operations and knew customer service needed improvement.

By that point, the apology was too little too late.

At some point it doesn’t matter how good the product is.

When the customer experience is so bad, it’s hard to recover.

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I was speaking to a senior marketing leader about a similar phenomenon recently.

He explained one of his leadership lessons to me.

When an internal client asks for something, your job isn’t just to deliver it.

Your job is to provide updates along the way.

You can’t just disappear and work on operations — delivering the work — without updates to your internal client.

Silence breeds all manner of doubt.

Did you forget?

Did you ignore the request?

Are you going to get back to me at all?

I had all of these doubts and more with my coffee maker.

You can be assured that your internal clients think the same if you leave them in silence.

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Build a mechanism to keep your stakeholders informed.

It’s a small use of your time, but it’s a big impact on your reliability and trustworthiness.

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To breaking the silence,

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