👀 This company just took mixternal comms way too far...

The most bananas corporate transparency experiment ever attempted

🙈 You’re not going to believe this.

Initech, the IT consulting company, is taking mixternal communications to a level that even I—your resident mixternal evangelist—didn’t see coming.

What’s happening: Initech boldly declared they are eliminating ALL distinctions between internal and external communications.

But not in the smart, strategic way we talk about in the Mixternal Comms Playbook. No…

☢️ They’ve gone nuclear:

• The employee intranet is now public-facing. I’m actually down with this, but not the way Initech is doing it. For example, they’re publishing every passive-aggressive comment about the copy machine being broken again for the world to see. Their CEO calls it “radical transparency.” 🙄

• They canceled their PR Newswire subscription. Okay, this actually makes sense too. Initech will now post all company announcements simultaneously to Threads, Bluesky, the Metaverse, and their new “Initech/Outatech” blog. (Seriously. That’s the name of it.)

• The pièce de résistance? The Q&A section of their quarterly earnings calls will now alternate between questions from shareholders and employees. I love this idea—after all, employees are shareholders, too! But can you imagine the questions?!

  • Goldman Sachs analyst: Could you elaborate on your Q3 revenue projections?

  • Employee from Accounting: Can we reinstate Meatless Mondays in the cafeteria?

🤪 It gets bonkers from here.

Employee performance reviews will be made public on LinkedIn. The head of HR announced managers and peers must post 360-degree feedback directly to the “Recommendations” section of employees’ LinkedIn profile pages.

• 🤦 Nothing says professional development quite like having your “needs improvement” areas broadcast to your entire network... and people “liking” it or “laughing” at it. (Support emoji, where are you?!)

To top it all off, the entire comms department has been renamed to—wait for it—the Office of Information Osmosis (OIO).

• 1984 much?

---

Initech’s mixternal moves feel like an episode of Black Mirror

Look, I'm all for smashing the wall between internal and external comms.

• It’s literally what I write about in this newsletter.

But Initech has turned the mixternal concept into what feels like a Black Mirror episode about corporate transparency.

As I was writing this, Initech’s legal team was reportedly working on a new format for SEC filings that includes a “But How Do You Really Feel?” section that includes conversation threads from the Blind social network.

• Because shareholders are dying to know last year’s free cash flow and to read the office goss about who’s dating whom.

Is this for real?

In a world where DOGE exists, does it even matter anymore?! Welcome to 2025, where the line between internal and external comms—just like the line between reality and absurdity—is about as clear as a TPS report cover sheet.

Editor's note: If you’re wondering whether this is real, please check today’s date and remember that all TPS reports require cover sheets. (Didn’t you get the memo?)

---

P.S. Seriously, now. Here’s a real-world example of an executive memo on how not to inspire employees. I wish it were an April Fool’s joke.

When the CEO Asks Employees to Blur Work and Life (Insider Comms™ From Wayfair)