This great snippet from FastCo's piece on GitHub's management structure hit me hard, especially as I've been thinking about the power of prose. See also: Ryan Tomayko on GitHub's open-source structure.

Communication isn’t just key to self-organization--it also solves or simplifies a bunch of other hurdles that growing companies face...

Marketing collateral is a natural by-product. When your company communicates internally with polished, clear, and well-produced content, it is easy to and repurpose that material for external communications. The kind of communication that is required for self-organization will end up producing all the events, schwag, and content you need to build and publicize an authentic brand.

I think that the power of this shouldn't be understated. Having a clear idea of the business you're in and how you communicate about it - which, as I've argued, can be done well through writing prose - can produce ripple effects throughout other facets of your company.

It also strikes me, reading the above quote, that slide decks are almost never presented to potential customers. If there are counterexamples to this, I'd love to see them. If not, I wonder if marketing departments are identifying weaknesses in the medium that upper level management is blind to.