My former boss and investment banking icon, Atedo Peterside, always challenged us to “err on the side of overcommunication”. But this was not just a slogan; it was a disciplined leadership practice. He translated this philosophy into action through structured marketing and communication meetings with professional staff and annual retreats where ideas were openly exchanged, assumptions were questioned, and critical conversations were actively encouraged. He personally championed rigorous debate and made it clear that communication was not a ceremonial exercise but a strategic tool for alignment, clarity, and execution. In retrospect, this was not merely a leadership style; it was a strategic approach to organisational communication.
This perspective aligns closely with the argument made by Paul Argenti, Robert Howell, and Karen Beck in MIT Sloan Management Review, where they caution that companies that continue to take a tactical, short-term approach to communicating with key constituencies will find it increasingly difficult to compete. They emphasise that developing an integrated, strategic approach to communication is critical to long-term success. When communication is treated as a support activity rather than a strategic capability, organisations do not merely communicate poorly; they become strategically blind, deaf, disconnected, and ultimately mute across the strategy life cycle.
“Organisations become strategically blind at the analysis stage when communication systems fail to capture and interpret signals from across the business environment.”
Organisations become strategically blind at the analysis stage when communication systems fail to capture and interpret signals from across the business environment. Daft and Weick’s work in the Academy of Management Review conceptualises organisations as interpretation systems, arguing that how firms scan and make sense of their environment is fundamentally shaped by internal communication processes. In practice, many leadership teams rely heavily on filtered reports while neglecting insights from frontline managers, customers, and operational units. The result is a distorted understanding of risks and opportunities. Strategic blindness, therefore, is rarely an intelligence problem; it is a communication design problem rooted in narrow information flows and weak upward dialogue.
They become strategically deaf during strategy development when leaders fail to listen across levels and functions. Michael Beer and Russell Eisenstat, in their Harvard Business Review research on having honest conversations about strategy, identify poor vertical and horizontal communication as a major barrier to alignment. When strategy is developed in executive silos without meaningful engagement with middle managers and operational leaders, critical assumptions remain unchallenged. Plans may appear coherent at the top but lack operational realism.
Listening, in this context, is not a soft skill but a strategic discipline. Organisations that institutionalise dialogue during strategy formulation are far more likely to produce strategies that are understood, owned, and executable across the enterprise.
Even when organisations see and listen, they often become strategically disconnected during execution. This is where communication breakdown shifts from interpretation to coordination. John Kotter’s work in Harvard Business Review highlights the undercommunication of vision as a central reason transformation efforts fail. Leaders frequently assume that once a strategy is announced, alignment will naturally follow. Strategy must be continuously translated into priorities, actions, and trade-offs across units. Lawrence Hrebiniak’s research on strategy implementation further shows that poor cross-functional communication and coordination are among the most significant obstacles to execution. When departments interpret strategy differently and operate in silos, execution fragments and momentum weaken.
Finally, organisations become strategically mute at the monitoring and improvement stage when communication climates suppress critical thinking, feedback, dissent, and learning. Elizabeth Morrison’s research on employee voice in the Academy of Management Annals shows that many organisations unintentionally create silence cultures where employees hesitate to speak up about risks, failures, or emerging problems. Also,
Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats, writing in Harvard Business Review on why organisations fail to learn, argue that learning breaks down when employees do not take time to think and reflect and when errors and lessons are not openly discussed. Strategic improvement depends not just on measurement, but on open communication loops that allow uncomfortable truths to surface. Without this, performance reviews become ritualistic and adaptation slows.
Taken together, these patterns reveal that communication is not merely the dissemination of information but the infrastructure of strategy itself.
From sensemaking and alignment to coordination and learning, every stage of the strategy life cycle is shaped by the quality of communication systems and leadership communication behaviours. Organisations that treat communication as a tactical function – limited to announcements, presentations, and memos – unknowingly weaken their strategic capacity.
The call to action for leaders is clear: diagnose your communication systems with the same rigour applied to strategy, finance, and risk. Examine how information flows during analysis, how dialogue occurs during strategy development, how priorities are translated during execution, and how feedback is captured during monitoring and improvement. Identify gaps, silos, distortions, and silence points within these processes, and implement evidence-based practices such as structured strategic conversations, cross-functional alignment forums, and open feedback mechanisms.
Organisations rarely lose their strategic direction suddenly; they gradually lose their strategic sense. They become blind to emerging risks, deaf to internal insights, disconnected in execution, and mute when learning is most needed. In an increasingly complex environment, the organisations that will outperform are not merely those with better strategies but also those with communication systems robust enough to help them come fully to their strategic senses.
Omagbitse Barrow is the chief executive of Efiko Management Consulting, which supports organisations to translate their strategy to results.
