Guide to Internal Communication, the Basecamp Way

Basecamp says communication should be mostly asynchronous, based on long-form writing, and placed where the work already lives. Meetings, chat, and immediate replies are treated as last resorts because they interrupt, create extra work, and spread context across the wrong places.

The guide also lays out recurring routines for sharing work and keeping everyone aligned, including daily and weekly check-ins, social prompts, heartbeats, kickoffs, announcements, and project-specific discussion threads. The goal is a single shared record that helps the whole company, including future employees, understand what is happening.

Reading notes

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• Communication is treated as unavoidable, so the company focuses on making it clear, timely, and low-friction.
• Long-form writing is preferred because it reduces meetings, calls, and interruptions.
• Meetings are a last resort, and urgency is treated as harmful unless there is a real emergency.
• Substantial decisions should be written out rather than handled in chat.
• Communication should not depend on schedule synchronization.
• The company wants people to ask questions, provide context, and leave space for clarifying follow-up.
• Internal communication happens mainly inside Basecamp, which serves as the central record for company-wide discussion, updates, and decisions.
• Daily check-ins ask what people worked on, and responses are visible to the whole company.
• Weekly check-ins ask what people will work on, focusing on the big picture rather than task lists.
• Social questions are used occasionally to help people share personal updates and strengthen remote-team relationships.
• Heartbeats summarize recent work for a team, department, or individual.
• Kickoffs summarize the next six weeks of planned work for a team.
• Company-wide announcements are posted in Basecamp so everyone sees the same information in the same place.
• Project work is communicated inside a dedicated project, with comments attached to the relevant task or document.
• The guide points readers to related resources on group chat, Shape Up, Hill Charts, and the company handbook.