“That’s Not What You Wanted?”

Have you ever played Gossip, the party game? It’s simple, great fun, and revealing. In Gossip, the participants line up in a row or a circle and the first player is given a sentence, or better yet, a number of sentences to memorize and then “whisper” the information to the next player in line, who then whispers the information to the next. The whispering continues until the last person then reveals to all what the message was, followed by a reading of the original message, word for word. There is almost always an astounding change in the message between the original and the final. Not only was the message phrase different, it very likely changed completely in meaning as well. Did you ever wonder?

• Who in the chain changed the message? How many people changed the message?  “Who should we blame?”
• Why did the players change it? “Why didn’t they follow instructions?”
• How did the change take place? Was it the meaning or a the actual message? “What kind of goof-up was committed?”
• How much did the change in the message matter? “What would the last person do with the message versus the first if they required action to be taken?”
• At what point was the “phrase” at risk of changing adversely? “When did we get into trouble?”

Retracing the transformation of the message and meaning may have proved nearly impossible. It was fun at the party, but is it fun when it happens at work?

So, now ask, do key messages and meanings change within, up, down, and across our organization? Do we experience substantive differences between what is intended and communicated to what is eventually interpreted and subsequently executed? Do we know if, where, how, and why these changes in message and meaning take place? How does the intent of direction get disconnected from the actions and results?  Do we find out after it is too late? Who is impacted? Does it include customers?

Perhaps one of the more frustrating challenges to executives is the extent of the “disconnects” that exist within the organization. These disconnects mean the sometimes large difference between what the leadership intends that be done and what is actually getting done. Whether the view is down and up the hierarchy of objectives or across the structures and functions within processes and projects, these disconnects can result in no results, poor results and the wrong results too often. The extent of the pain may also be compounded by the language, format, compartmentalization, and perspectives that business plans, budgets and policy edicts can precipitate. If we listen, like a fly on the wall, we can hear how language and focus change as we move through the enterprise.

 “If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.” Confucius, 551-479 BC

It is fascinating just how much organizations, functions, departments, teams and projects develop their own language. Words, slang, and acronyms take on meanings that are derived from group history, culture, business environment, and functional disciplines. These often redefine to how success and failure are evaluated across an enterprise. As we move across or down an organization, as the nature of execution changes, so do the verbs and nouns change and the language that supports those activities. What we do affects what we say and what words mean, and the words affect what we do. When you hear terms such as “making our numbers” as a surrogate for performance, they don’t necessarily mean the same thing from one group to the other.

So, do we have a way to knowing:

• How do the objectives that we ask the enterprise to accomplish change in language (verbs and nouns) as they are translated down the hierarchy from intent into actions? How is the Voice of the Business change into the Voices of the Processes and Projects?
• How do the goals and requirements change as we move across the organizations between and through the different functions and departments in our processes and projects? Do they resemble the Gossip game?
• Does the language of our tools and planning and control processes translate well into the language of execution?
• Do we have a dynamic Rosetta stone for the bridge between Engineerese and Accountantese, or better yet, Customerese?
• Did we miss something that mattered? Was it an opportunity, compliance requirement, customer problem? Oh my!
• Who should we blame? It’s a people problem, isn’t it?