5 Ways to Fix How Your Team Communicates (Before It Costs You)

Poor communication isn't just annoying, it's expensive. Research from Grammarly and The Harris Poll estimates ineffective communication costs U.S. businesses up to $1.2 trillion annually. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, 44% of failed projects are blamed on communication breakdowns.

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The good news: most of this is fixable. Not with more tools or more meetings but with clearer habits. Here are five things you can do today.

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1. Clarify who owns what

Confusion over ownership is one of the fastest ways to stall work. When everyone is responsible, no one is. Be explicit about who is the decision-maker versus who is simply a contributor on any given task.

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2. Standardise how updates are shared

If people are looking in three different places for updates, they'll eventually stop looking. Pick one format and one channel and stick to it. A weekly ops update with three fields: status, risks, next steps gives everyone what they need without the noise. Consistency builds trust and reduces the time people spend chasing information.

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3. Run fewer, better meetings

Before scheduling, ask: does this actually need to be a meeting? If yes, only invite people who need to be there, share an agenda in advance, and always end with a clear record of decisions made, action items, and who owns each one.

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4. Document decisions visibly

Decisions that live only in someone's head, or in a Slack thread no one can find,quietly cause confusion long after the moment has passed. After any significant decision, post a brief summary: what was decided, why, and who it affects. This single habit reduces confusion, prevents duplicated work, and keeps teams aligned even across time zones.

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5. Make dependencies visible

Blocked work is often invisible work. When one team is waiting on another, that dependency should be explicit,  not buried in an email chain. Add a simple "Waiting on / Blocked by" field to your regular updates. It makes bottlenecks visible before they become crises, and gives leadership the context they need to unblock things quickly.

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The teams that communicate well aren't doing anything revolutionary. They've just agreed on a few simple habits and stuck to them.