The 3 Unspoken Laws of PM Communication

Most people think "good communication" means having charisma or building beautiful slide decks.

It doesn't. In Product Management, communication isn't a soft skill—it's an engineering constraint. If the signal doesn't get through, the product breaks just as surely as if the server went down.

If you're new to this game (or just tired of repeating yourself), forget the corporate buzzwords. These are the three mechanical laws that actually govern PM communication.

1. The Rule of Seven

Here is the most common frustration I hear from new PMs: "But I already told them that."

It doesn't matter. The first time you say something, nobody hears you. The second time, they might nod. By the fifth time, they're annoyed.

Only when you are absolutely sick of repeating yourself are your stakeholders finally beginning to internalize the message.

Stop treating communication as a "one-and-done" task. Treat it like a marketing campaign. You need multiple touchpoints across multiple channels (Slack, email, All Hands, 1:1s) to get a single idea to stick.

2. Bad News Must Travel Faster Than Good News

Good news can wait. You can save a launch announcement for the Friday demo. It's fine.

Bad news ages like milk, not wine.

If a deadline is slipping, if a metric crashed, or if a key engineer just quit—you need to broadcast that information immediately.

Why? Because trust is built on predictability. Stakeholders can handle a delay; they cannot handle a surprise delay. When you sit on bad news hoping you can "fix it" before anyone notices, you aren't being heroic. You're being dangerous.

3. Clarity Over Completeness

Academic writing teaches us to be exhaustive. Business writing requires us to be exclusive.

Nobody reads your long emails. Nobody reads your 40-page PRD.

The goal of a PM update isn't to prove you did the work. It's to help someone else make a decision.

Use the BLUF method (Bottom Line Up Front). Put the "ask" or the "risk" in the very first sentence. If you force an executive to hunt for the point, you've already lost them.

The Takeaway

You don't need to be an extrovert to be a great communicator. You just need to be repetitive, honest about the bad stuff, and relentlessly brief.

Sources & Further Reading:

• HBR: How to Say It Over and Over Again (On the importance of repetition)
• The Pyramid Principle (The gold standard for structuring communication)
• Marty Cagan on PM Communication (SVPG Insights)