I once had to convince a team of engineers to dig into a cloud services portal on a monthly basis to forecast and reconcile infra costs. This was a tough sell, because most engineers are excited about solving complex technical problems—not doing business math for an exec report.
The real problem here was that my colleagues didn’t have the context around how the business made money. There was widespread enthusiasm around an eventual IPO, but the basic requirements of getting there were a mystery.
Fast-tracking business 101 lessons while asking your coworkers to adopt an unappealing new routine isn’t ideal. However, this one-off experience is even more troubling when you consider how many tradeoff decisions are made on a day to day basis in your average company.
By educating your team on business fundamentals, you remove the mystery around everything from headcount allocations to feature prioritization and research budgets.
This Gap Is Everywhere
I began my career with zero context on product strategy or startup economics. I started out managing a support team, where that knowledge wasn’t required—but would have been useful as we navigated customer requests and resourcing decisions.
I later shifted to cross-functional “glue” roles: program management, PMO leadership, Chief of Staff. This gave me a broad perspective on how different functions work together in a startup, and I pieced together the missing context from my early career with hands-on work: coordinating roadmap planning cycles, aligning COGS numbers with margin targets, and organizing org-wide budget planning.
Along the way, I’ve encountered many colleagues who were just as uninformed about business fundamentals as I had been. This creates unnecessary friction: budget season is a fraught exercise, roadmap reveals become a tense debate, and sales promises create existential dilemmas.
How to Fix It
By arming your team with context, you can minimize these issues. You’ll need an intro lesson on Business 101 first—for broad distribution and participation, try making this an All Hands topic.
Start With the Foundation
Begin with an explanation of how success is defined for your company. What metrics do you track? What are investors concerned about? Explain these concepts in plain language, then connect each description to the technical terms.
Do a Test Run
To make sure you’ve nailed the messaging, test your comms on different team members before presenting widely. For instance, if you’re talking about financial metrics, find someone who isn’t thinking about this regularly, e.g., a customer success manager or QA engineer. Ask them to give you candid feedback and explain the concept back to you in their own words.
This gives your messaging a boost and creates a built-in opportunity to get to know a range of team members.
Set Up Deep Dives as Needed
If the team has a lot of questions about a specific topic, set up time for a longer, more detailed presentation. This is a great way to spotlight different segments of the company while also providing important context. For example, the CFO might explain profit margin; the CPO could walk through product roadmap planning.
Make It A Routine
Repetition is a cardinal rule of effective comms. Once you’ve covered the basics in detail, compress it into a few punchy, memorable sentences and use it as a preamble at every All Hands before giving an overview of the company’s current state.
Beyond All Hands, repeat your preamble verbatim in as many relevant contexts as you can: meetings, emails, 1:1 conversations. Repeat it until your team can recite it word for word.