When a Twitter staff person posted to an internal forum questioning whether the company was doing enough to prevent harassment in tweets, CEO Dick Costolo responded bluntly with a since-leaked forum post admitting that Twitter’s doing a bad job at it, that he takes full responsibility, and that they’re going to be much more aggressive about it going forward in order to create a better culture of communication.

This brief – but important – exchange on Twitter’s internal forum was made possible by Twitter’s culture of open communication within the organization. At many companies, a low-level staff person might not feel comfortable calling out a deficiency of the company or challenging the status quo. Especially not in view of the CEO.

That’s not the case at Twitter, where Communicate fearlessly to build trust is a core value. “It is remarkably difficult to scale communication as a company grows,” Costolo said at the Great Place to Work Conference.

To help foster a culture of communication, Costolo speaks to every new hire class at Twitter, where he encourages new hires to feel comfortable challenging anyone in the organization in pursuit of the truth. After all, Costolo claims that “the most important thing to do in a learning organization is to get to the truth.”

Questions? Comments? Want to discuss further? Email me at scott@storiesincorporated.com.