The Comms Reality Most Leaders Miss

After a decade inside large organizations, here’s the truth most leaders never see:

Your official messages are only a fraction of what people actually hear.

Not because you aren’t strategic.
Not because you aren’t visible.
But because the modern workplace has hundreds of competing signals — and your message is just one of them.

Here are the two realities every communicator must master.

Metrics are more than a report card.
They’re your early-warning system.

Data shows you:

• what’s breaking through
• what’s getting lost
• where your audience is saturated
• where they’re starving for clarity
• which messages spark movement — and which die on contact

Data turns gut feelings into direction.

Great communicators don’t report metrics.
They interpret them.
They adjust, recalibrate, and defend decisions with them.

This is the part nobody tells new communicators:

Everyone who speaks in your organization is a communicator.

The manager sending a 7 a.m. email?
Communicator.

The exec riffing in a town hall?
Communicator.

The subject matter expert explaining a process change?
Communicator.

The rumor someone mentions in a hallway?
Communicator.

Your message is just one voice in a crowded ecosystem.

And you will never have full visibility into all of it — so stop trying to control the whole machine.

Your job isn’t to gatekeep.
It’s to architect.

You create:

• the story everyone ladders up to
• the frameworks that keep messages aligned
• the guardrails that prevent chaos
• the structures that help others communicate well

The best communicators don’t own every message.
They orchestrate them.

Here’s how your audience experiences information in real life:

It’s humbling — and freeing.

It means your work is not about perfection.
It’s about orchestration.

You’re not trying to control every message.
You’re making sure every message points to the same north star.

When you understand this ecosystem, clarity becomes something you design, not something you chase.

You’re not the author of every story.
You’re the architect of the narrative.

You’re the one who creates the structure people can trust — even when multiple voices are speaking at once.

And the organization feels different when a communicator steps into that role:

• less noise
• fewer contradictions
• clearer decisions
• fewer fire drills
• more coherence
• more trust

That’s the invisible power of the work you do.

Until next time,
Ana

Clarity isn’t corporate - it’s human.