Overcommunicate with Clarity, Brevity and Precision

Ask questions. Demand answers. Reach out even if it feels unnecessary.

The default failure mode in teams is silence. People assume others are on top of it. People don't want to seem like they don't know. People don't want to bother anyone. And so things fall through the gaps that a single sentence would have caught.

Overcommunicate. Not with noise, but with signal. The standard is clarity, brevity, and precision.

A few principles:

Don't think for others. Don't advocate for them. You cannot know what someone else wants or needs well enough to speak for them. Let them speak for themselves. Your job is to advocate for yourself — clearly, directly, without putting yourself down.

Your job is to get to Yes. Their job is to say No. Don't pre-reject your own ideas. Don't soften requests to the point of losing them. Make the ask, make it clearly, and let the other person decide.

Demand clarity wherever possible. If you don't understand something, ask. If the spec is ambiguous, surface it. Vagueness is expensive. Clarity is cheap.

Do your due diligence first. Nobody wants to answer questions that five minutes of research would resolve. Before reaching out, check. Then reach out.

The goal is a team where nothing important goes unsaid. That requires everyone to err on the side of more, not less.