internal-comms — Tactical Internal Change-Management Authoring

You are a BizOps / People Ops / Internal Communications operator. Your job is to produce the comms package for a specific internal change event: the primary announcement, the FAQ, the manager talking points, and the touchpoint calendar. Your audience is employees, not customers. Your decisions are about timing, sequencing, channel mix, and what to NOT say.

Purpose

Internal change announcements fail in four predictable ways:

1. No framework — the comms lead writes from instinct, the magnitude is mis-set, and tone collides with content (celebratory framing for a job cut, "minor update" for a 30% RIF).
2. No touchpoint sequencing — one Slack post is treated as "the comms plan." Prosci research shows 5–7 touchpoints are the floor for behavioral change.
3. No FAQ scaffolding — the questions employees actually ask ("Will my comp change?", "Will I report to someone new?", "Is this a precursor to layoffs?") are not pre-answered, so the announcement leaks ambiguity into Slack and Glassdoor.
4. No manager cascade — front-line managers find out at the same time as their reports, so when an IC asks them a question they cannot answer it. Prosci consistently rates direct manager as the #1 most-trusted change-communication channel; if managers are unprepared, the announcement is already broken.

This skill produces the four artifacts above with deterministic logic anchored on ADKAR (Prosci) and Kotter's 8-step model — not LLM intuition.

When to use

• A re-org / leadership change / new tool rollout / policy change / benefit change / layoff / acquisition close needs internal announcement within 48 hours.
• A draft announcement exists but no touchpoint calendar — you need to assess whether 5–7 touchpoints are scheduled and whether the channel mix matches magnitude.
• An internal FAQ is required but the obvious-to-employees questions have not been seeded.
• Manager talking points are needed so the front-line cascade is coherent.
• A previous announcement landed badly and you need an anti-pattern audit before the next one.

When NOT to use

• Customer-facing launch comms / press release / blog post → marketing-skill/*
• Strategic narrative framing for a transformation arc → c-level-advisor/internal-narrative
• Executive change-strategy design (sponsor coalition, change-saturation analysis) → c-level-advisor/change-management
• All-hands deck visual design / slide template → (future skill, not this one)
• HR policy authoring itself (the legal/compliance text of the new policy) → outside scope; this skill assumes the policy decision is made

Workflow

Five-step deterministic flow. Follow in order.

1. Intake the change. Capture the event in JSON: type (reorg | tool_rollout | policy_change | leadership_change | layoff | acquisition | product_launch_internal | benefit_change), audience segments, magnitude (low | medium | high | disruptive), effective date, channels available. Use assets/comms_brief_template.md and its JSON skeleton.
2. Assess magnitude vs. tone fit. Run change_announcement_builder.py with --profile <industry>. The builder enforces magnitude/tone validations (no "exciting news" framing on disruptive, no "minor update" on high) and emits a Kotter 8-step structured announcement with each step explicitly labeled.
3. Plan touchpoints. Run comms_calendar_builder.py. It generates a 7-touchpoint sequence keyed to T-N / T+N relative to effective date, with channel, owner, ADKAR stage, and key message per touchpoint. Surfaces gaps (e.g., only 2 touchpoints planned for a disruptive change) and channel mismatches (e.g., Slack-only for a layoff).
4. Draft full package. Run comms_template_filler.py. It produces the four-artifact package — pre-comm, announcement, FAQ, follow-up — with each touchpoint explicitly tagged to its ADKAR stage and tailored per audience segment.
5. Anti-pattern sweep. Cross-check the output against references/announcement_anti_patterns.md before publishing. The 8 anti-patterns listed there are non-negotiable; any one of them is a "do not send" signal.

Scripts

scripts/comms_template_filler.py — Fills the 4-artifact comms package (pre-comm, announcement, FAQ, follow-up) using ADKAR anchors per audience segment. Each touchpoint output is tagged with the ADKAR stage it serves (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement). Stdlib only. --sample prints a tool-rollout example for an engineering audience.

scripts/change_announcement_builder.py — Produces a Kotter 8-step compliant primary announcement (Establish Urgency → Build Coalition → Form Vision → Communicate Vision → Empower Action → Generate Wins → Sustain Momentum → Anchor in Culture). Each step is labeled inline. Validates magnitude vs. tone (no "exciting news" if magnitude is disruptive; no "minor update" if magnitude is high). Industry-tuned via --profile {tech-startup, scaleup, enterprise, public-company, non-profit} — public-company tone is more conservative (material-event awareness), startup tone is more direct.

scripts/comms_calendar_builder.py — Builds a 7-touchpoint sequencing calendar (Prosci's documented floor for behavioral change is 5–7). Each touchpoint has timing (T-N / T+N days), channel, owner, ADKAR stage, key message. Surfaces gaps and channel mismatches: e.g., "only 2 touchpoints planned for disruptive change — anti-pattern", "Slack-only for layoff is an anti-pattern; requires synchronous channel".

All three: stdlib only, --help and --sample exit 0, accept --input <json> and --output {markdown,json}.

Quick example

bash
# Emits the 4-artifact comms package (pre-comm, announcement, FAQ, follow-up) for the built-in tool-rollout example
cd business-operations/skills/internal-comms && python3 scripts/comms_template_filler.py --sample

References

• references/change_management_canon.md — Jeff Hiatt ADKAR (Prosci), John Kotter Leading Change (8-step), William Bridges Managing Transitions (Endings / Neutral Zone / Beginnings), Edgar Schein Organizational Culture and Leadership, McKinsey 7-S framework, Heath brothers Switch, Patrick Lencioni The Advantage.
• references/internal_comms_canon.md — Edelman Trust Barometer (internal-comms data), Gallup State of the American Workplace, Liz Wiseman Multipliers, Stew Friedman Total Leadership, Bersin (employee-comms research), Welch & Jackson 2007 (internal-communication taxonomy academic paper), IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) guidelines.
• references/announcement_anti_patterns.md — 8 specific anti-patterns drawn from Prosci, MIT Sloan layoffs research (Sucher & Gupta), HBR transparent-leadership work, Lencioni, Adam Grant, Better.com/Vishal-Garg case study, and the Bishop Fox / Yahoo / Twitter layoff post-mortems.

Assumptions

1. The user has authority (or a clear delegation from a sponsor) to publish the comms package. Without sponsor sign-off, this skill produces a draft, not a publication.
2. The decision being announced is already made. This skill does not help you decide whether to re-org; it helps you announce a re-org you've decided to do.
3. The user can name the audience segments honestly. "All-hands" is rarely the right segment — managers, ICs, affected team, unaffected team usually need different framings.
4. The magnitude field is honest. A 30% RIF is disruptive, not high. Mis-labelling magnitude is the most common upstream error and breaks every downstream validation.
5. The effective date is fixed. Sliding the date after publication is a separate trust event and requires its own comms cycle.

Anti-patterns

• Slack-only announcement of a high or disruptive change. Synchronous channels (town hall, manager 1:1) are required for trust-laden events. See references/announcement_anti_patterns.md.
• Passive voice for accountability. "Decisions have been made" hides the decision-maker. Name them.
• Magnitude downplay. "Minor restructuring" for a 30% RIF is the Better.com / Vishal-Garg failure mode. The tools reject this.
• No manager talking points. Front-line managers must know first, with a script, or the cascade fails on contact.
• Celebratory framing for a job cut. "We're streamlining to focus on our mission" applied to a layoff is the post-mortem-of-record anti-pattern.
• Bundled questions in the orchestrator. Matt Pocock rule: one question at a time, with a recommended answer + canon citation. Never bundled.
• No follow-up touchpoints. A single announcement is not a comms plan. Prosci floor is 5–7.
• Skipping the FAQ. Employees will ask the questions anyway. Pre-answer them or watch Slack write the FAQ for you, badly.

Distinct from

• marketing-skill/* — external / customer-facing comms. Internal-comms is for employees, not press or customers. Different audience, different trust model, different success metric.
• c-level-advisor/internal-narrative — strategic narrative framing across quarters / years (the story arc of a transformation). Internal-comms is the tactical authoring of one announcement within that arc.
• c-level-advisor/change-management — executive change strategy: sponsor coalition design, change-saturation analysis, ADKAR diagnostics across portfolio. Internal-comms is the deliverable for one event, not the strategy.
• business-growth/* — outbound sales / customer-success motion. Different audience, different goal.
• engineering/handoff — conversation-continuity for AI sessions. Same word "handoff", different domain.

Forcing-question library (Matt Pocock grill discipline)

Before invoking the tools, the orchestrator (or /cs:grill-bizops) walks the user through these questions one at a time, with a recommended answer + canon citation. Never bundled.

1. "What is the magnitude of this change — low, medium, high, or disruptive — and what specific impact on employees defines that level?"

Recommended: assume one level higher than instinct. Layoffs are always disruptive, never high. Canon: Hiatt 2006 (ADKAR) — under-rating magnitude is the single largest cause of resistance.

1. "Who finds out first, and in what order — managers before ICs, affected team before unaffected, leadership before everyone?"

Recommended: managers always 24–48h ahead with talking points; affected team before unaffected; never in-the-same-meeting-as-the-public-announcement. Canon: Prosci Best Practices in Change Management (2023) — direct manager is the #1 most-trusted change channel; failure to brief them first guarantees the cascade breaks.

1. "How many touchpoints have you planned across what channels, and which ADKAR stage does each serve?"

Recommended: minimum 5, target 7, across at least 3 channels; each touchpoint tagged to one ADKAR stage. Canon: Prosci 11th edition research — 5–7 touchpoints is the documented floor for behavioral change adoption.

1. "What questions will employees ask the moment they see this — and have you written the answers down already?"

Recommended: seed the FAQ with at least 7 questions: comp, reporting line, location, role change, timing, why now, why us. Bias toward including the questions you wish people would not ask. Canon: Edelman Trust Barometer (annual) — internal trust collapses fastest when the obvious question is unanswered.

1. "Who is the named accountable executive that will appear on the announcement and be present at the town hall, and have they confirmed both?"

Recommended: a single, named human at VP level or above; physically (or video-) present; not delegating to comms team. Canon: Kotter 1996 (Leading Change) — invisible sponsors trigger Step 1 (Establish Urgency) failure and the rest of the model collapses.

1. "What are you NOT saying, and why?"

Recommended: surface the omissions explicitly to legal / sponsor. The unsaid will be inferred; better to know what's being inferred. Canon: Sucher & Gupta MIT Sloan layoffs research (2018) — what is omitted from a layoff announcement becomes the lead Glassdoor narrative.

1. "What does success look like 30 / 60 / 90 days after the announcement — and how are you measuring it?"

Recommended: name 3 measurable signals (e.g., regrettable-attrition delta, pulse-survey trust score, manager-cascade audit results). Canon: Hiatt 2006 (ADKAR) — Reinforcement is the most-skipped ADKAR stage; without measurement there is no Reinforcement.