Remember the telephone game? I played it as a kid. Sometimes we use it as an icebreaker. It begins with a group of people sitting in a circle. One person whispers something to the person next person. That person then attempts to repeat what they heard (or thought they heard) to the next person. This continues from one person to the next until the end, when the last person tells the group what they heard. The fun is hearing the often incredible difference between what the first person said and what the last person heard. It often makes for a good laugh.
Unfortunately, the telephone game is played daily in the corporate world. It wreaks havoc, including within ours. Some directive, plan, or piece of information is conveyed from somewhere near the top. It travels down the chain of command. At each level, the person hearing the directive listens to it, interprets it through their own experience, filters out pieces of it, and then passes it along. The message is likely similar, but with some slight changes, albeit unintended. This continues down the line. By the time the directive reaches the bottom, it is often quite different than what was stated or intended at the top. Sometimes the message can get changed so badly, the directive received by those expected to execute the directive, the directive makes little practical sense. Employees are left scratching their heads trying to figure out why the senior leadership is so ignorant and out of touch. And if the poor souls somehow manage to execute the impractical or (now) ill-advised idea, the results can leave the senior leadership wondering how the people at the bottom could be so crazy.
The telephone game works both up the chain of command and down. Problems at the lower level of the company or ideas to improve operations are generated from the bottom. After all, we leaders are always asking people to pass along ideas and feedback. That information is filtered by each level of leadership as it works its way up. Many issues get filtered so much that they never reach senior leadership. Others, by the time they reach the top are either a major crisis or so garbled that the only message heard is “Y’all suck.” I don’t know how to fix, “You suck.” So nothing happens beyond a depressed leadership. And the people at the bottom who have been raising real issues and proposing real solutions are dang sure that their leaders don’t care and are completely out of touch.
Here’s a recent example from our business. I’m paraphrasing, but you’ll get the point.
I have been quite vocal about our need to run lean and make sure we’re careful when adding people to our corporate team as corporate overhead gets expensive quickly and the business has to pay for it. In my mind, my intent is to run our business as efficiently as possible while improving our service. What was heard by the business was “We need to cut costs.” That turned into “We can’t hire people because they are our biggest expense.” That turned into, “Hiring Freeze throughout the company.” Managers in the field understandably pushed back, “It’s soon to be spring and we’re going to need people to adequately service our customers.” They got told nicely “Thanks, but it came from the top.” Eventually, a brave manager was upset enough to say something. When I asked who told him we couldn’t hire anyone, he said, “You!” Whoops.
The telephone game can also have deadly consequences. In 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia was struck by a piece of foam during liftoff, potentially damaging the protective heat shield on the leading edge of its left wing. Boeing and NASA frantically tried to understand the risk and develop a plan while the astronauts were in space. As detailed in the accident report, between the engineers who worked on the problem and the managers who ultimately approved of the shuttle’s re-entry, the serious risks raised by the engineers were transformed into approval. The results were deadly, as all seven astronauts were killed when the shuttle disintegrated at nearly 15 times the speed of sound when the heat shield failed. As the report from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded, “Over time, a pattern of ineffective communication has resulted, leaving risks improperly defined, problems unreported, and concerns unexpressed.”
How do we stop the telephone game?
Commander’s Intent. The best way to stop the telephone game is a by clearly communicating the commander’s intent. It was developed by the US military to help provide guidance and flexibility to subordinate units when the plan changes (as it often does in combat). Commander’s intent is a concise statement of the purpose of the director/operation and the desired end state. It must be understood two levels below the issuing leader. The concept is to combine both the “Why” and the overall intent of the directive from the top. Thus, if things change over the course of any period of time, so long as people are acting within the commander’s intent, things go well. In combat, where the plan rarely survives very long after first contact, the commander’s intent is critical for success, as it allows those in the field with the actual knowledge to make decisions. It empowers the people while ensuring that they act within the overall intent of the leader. In other words, it assumes the telephone game around specifics is going to exist but still allows for the job to get done.
Turning to my example from above. If I explained my intent was to try to minimize our corporate overhead load while improving how we serve the field, even if people misunderstood my specific task, they could use their knowledge of their part of the company to prevent a massive expansion of corporate overhead load while improving service. The field would realize the directive didn’t apply to them (as they are not corporate overhead). And corporate wouldn’t be barred from adding people if the overall impact was to reduce the overall expense.
Backbrief. The second technique is called a backbrief. Backbriefs are used to ensure that what is heard by the receiver matches what is said by the speaker. Thus, when you tell your subordinate to do something. Instead of asking, “Do you understand?” which invariably gets a “Yes,” stop and ask them to tell you in their own words what they heard. It’s like the telephone game but instead of the next person guessing, they would not be able to tell the next person without first telling the person who told them exactly what they heard. If there was any discrepancy, the speaker could then clarify. If these were the rules, the telephone game would be very boring, very quickly.
Seven-times, Seven Ways. There is an old saying in marketing that a prospect needs to “hear” the advertiser’s message at least seven times before they’ll take action to buy that product or service. That’s why you see so many of the same ads in so many different places. Leaders need to follow this rule as well with a twist; we need to tell people seven times but use a different means of communication each time. People communicate and receive messages differently and it’s our job to make sure the message gets out clearly, early, and often. We need to say it seven times, seven different ways. Here are eight possibilities: (1) Chain of command (word of mouth), (2) email (direct), (3) text, (4) video, (4) weekly updates (via email), (5) Slack, (6) Teams, (7) on our internal website, and (8) printouts distributed at the site. That’s a lot, but if the message is important, we as leaders need to do the work to make sure everyone’s heard it.
At the end of the day, all of us would be wise to remember the single greatest enemy of communication is the illusion it has occurred. What we think we say is often very different than what is heard. And the more levels the communication must travel through, the greater the risk of distortion. Strong leadership requires us to (a) recognize it, and (b) take steps to counteract it. If we can do it – if we can kill the telephone game – we can avoid a lot of pain and improve both our customer and employee experience.
Onward!
Jeff
