Communication
The Problem with the Telephone Game
Cascading communication is like a flawed game of telephone: everybody hears a message, but did they hear the right message?
Related Articles
Filter by Category
Filter by Author
Back to Latest Articles
Self-Management
Putting Down the Whack-A-Mole Mallet
Great leaders don’t just react to exceptions—they redesign systems to prevent them. Progress comes from refining workflows, not just playing whack-a-mole with disruptions.
Leadership
Acknowledging Power Distance
Authentic leadership isn’t just about being genuine—it’s about being humane. Leaders must balance their authority with empathy, bridging the gap between their humanity and the power they hold.
Self-Management
In Case of Bad Days
Save those encouraging notes and emails in a 'For Bad Days' folder. When imposter syndrome hits, pull it out and let those kind words remind you that you are great at what you do.
Productivity
Nobody Will Protect Your Focus For You
How I've learned to protect time for deep thinking and doing
Managing People
If You Want to Build a Ship…
Many leaders view their job as creating thrust behind the organization (read: "sense of urgency"). I don't see it that way.
Managing People
Nine Phrases Every Leader Should Use More Often
Every leader should prioritize the power of language in their interactions. Using phrases that convey vulnerability, openness, and empathy can transform a team's culture.
Leadership
Building Legacies that Endure
Even in the face of disheartening transformations, the connections forged and the values instilled continue to ripple through time, reminding us that our legacies are built in the space between human beings.
Leadership
Get Comfortable with Ambiguity
Great leaders know when to embrace uncertainty outside their teams but prioritize creating clear paths and shared goals within, ensuring everyone moves forward together.
Leadership
This I Believe
Leadership is built on beliefs, lessons, and experiences—big and small—that shape how we guide others. Here’s a collection of truths I hold about leading people, from embracing imperfection to cultivating clarity, empathy, and courage.
Communication
What’s in a Name?
People's names matter, and it's worth taking the time to get them right.
Productivity
Time to Blow Up Your Calendar
Declaring calendar bankruptcy every now and then is a good thing.
Making Great Products
On Attics and Assumptions: The Hidden Cost of Inaction
Buying our first house was a dream come true, but it quickly turned into a costly lesson about ignoring problems. What we thought was an insurmountable expense turned out to be a simple solution, teaching me the importance of recognizing and challenging limiting beliefs.
Leadership
Pee, Poo, and Unintended Consequences
When my son gamed our potty-training system to maximize cartoons, I realized something: measuring the wrong thing drives the wrong behavior. The same is true in software development—if we focus solely on output, we risk missing the outcomes that truly matter.
User Experience
Design Is About Process, Not Heroics
While most people settle for the first workable solution, designers dig deeper, exploring a multitude of ideas and embracing risk. This is their superpower.
Making Great Products
Tension Is To Be Loved
The tension between designers, developers, and product managers often feels like a struggle for dominance—but what if that tension is the key to building great products?
The Problem with the Telephone Game
Remember those schoolyard games of telephone, where “John ate a banana” would hilariously morph into “Don hates your nana” as it was whispered from one child to another? Whether due to mishearing or intentional distortion, the message that the last child received was never the one the first child sent.
We’ve all experienced this. Yet how many companies rely on the telephone game of cascading communication as their primary (or only) means of communication with their teams?
Cascading communication doesn’t work.
Let me say that again: CASCADING. COMMUNICATION. DOES. NOT. WORK.
It’s delusional to believe that you can effectively deliver a message to a large team by simply telling your direct reports and expecting them to deliver the same unchanged message to their direct reports until it reaches everyone.
Many leaders suffer from the fallacious belief that their intent—the message they desired to send—is what matters in communication. It’s not. The message is what was received by the last person in the chain of the telephone game, not what you told the first one.
In order to lead effectively, you need a system for distributing messages to the entire organization and for memorializing them so that there is no opportunity for confusion in the future.
Charge your leaders at every level with reinforcing the message, but don’t risk the message getting lost in the layers of your organization.
Communicating with your team is one of the most significant leadership levers you possess. Don’t leave it to chance.
Cover photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash
