Dori Moreno | Growth Strategist | Dori Moreno | mail me |
Many organisations believe they have a communication problem. Teams are working in silos. Messages are being misunderstood. Decisions are not filtering through. People are not taking enough ownership. However, these challenges often signal something deeper.
Leaders often say, ‘We need better communication’. But when we unpack it, the issue is usually deeper than communication. People are in meetings, sending updates, using WhatsApp groups, sharing emails and having conversations. A lot is being said, but not enough is being understood, agreed on or acted on.
Communication is not just about passing information along. It is about creating shared meaning. If the meaning is unclear, the message will keep breaking down. And at the mid-year point, this becomes especially important. Many businesses are reviewing performance. However, they are not necessarily reviewing whether their teams are aligned around the same priorities, decisions and direction.
Information-sharing is not alignment
Many organisations mistake information-sharing for alignment. A business often thinks it is aligned because everyone attended the same meeting or nodded at the same presentation. But attendance is not alignment. Agreement in a room is not alignment. Silence is not alignment.
The signs of false alignment show up afterwards. Once the meeting ends, different interpretations begin to emerge. Priorities start competing. Side conversations take over. Agreement in the room often gives way to very different behaviour afterwards. This highlights the cost of ambiguity, as teams move forward with different assumptions.
Some organisations also mistake harmony for alignment. Because there is no obvious conflict, leaders assume everyone is on the same page. However, real alignment is not the absence of disagreement. Instead, it is the ability to surface disagreement early enough to make better decisions.
The consequences become visible when different parts of the business work from different interpretations of the same goal. Sales may interpret growth one way. Operations may interpret it another way. Finance may interpret it through cost control. None of those interpretations is necessarily wrong. However, if people do not bring them together around shared priorities, the business starts pulling in different directions.
When different interpretations take over
The result is duplication, mixed messages and slower execution. It also creates emotional strain, as individuals begin to read between the lines and try to work out what leadership really means. The cost of ambiguity becomes evident when employees spend more time interpreting intentions than executing priorities.
People are working hard, but not always working together. The instinct in many organisations is to respond with more meetings and more updates. However, this simply adds weight to an already overloaded system.
If the direction is unclear, another meeting just gives people another space to talk around the same uncertainty. If decisions are not properly closed, another conversation may simply reopen them. More meetings can even create the illusion that progress is happening. People feel busy, and leaders feel engaged. However, unless there is clarity around what was decided, who owns what and what changes now, the business has not moved forward.
I believe one of the biggest warning signs appears when information flow becomes heavier because it compensates for weak foundations. The more unclear the business is, the more communication it needs to keep itself going.
Ownership is another area where confusion often surfaces. People do not know whether they have authority or whether they still need permission. As a result, they over-check, escalate unnecessarily or wait for someone more senior to step in.
In many businesses, leaders say they want people to take ownership. However, they have not clearly defined ownership. People cannot take ownership of what has not been made clear. This is especially common in founder-led and growing businesses. In these environments, decisions often sit close to one or two key people, while the rest of the team is left interpreting direction rather than owning it. The cost of ambiguity often emerges through hesitation, delayed decisions and unnecessary escalation.
Clarifying what has been left open
I recently facilitated a culture and alignment process where the issue was never a lack of discussion. People cared deeply about the business. However, uncertainty existed around ownership, decision flow and how certain behaviours should show up day to day. As those issues were addressed, the quality of conversations changed, and responsibility increased.
The focus shifted away from blame and towards understanding what the business needed to move forward. The answer is not always more discussion. Before those in charge try to make sense of why people are not communicating, they need to recognise where they have left too much undecided, unspoken or assumed.
Often, organisations need clearer decisions before they need more conversations. Perhaps the more uncomfortable question leaders need to ask themselves is not, ‘Why are people not understanding?’ but rather, ‘What have we left open to interpretation?’
Communication problems often start with what has not been clarified, not with what teams have failed to hear. And when leaders leave too much open to interpretation, people do not stop working. They simply start pulling in different directions.