Quick question.
Did your team actually hear you?
Not “did you say it”. Not “did you present it”. Did it land in their heads the same way it lives in yours?
Here’s the catch: you can be right, clear, and well-meaning… and still be misunderstood.
This happens in every big organisation. Banking. Finance. Software. Public sector. Doesn’t matter. The bigger the place, the more your message gets translated on the way down. Like a game of telephone, except the prize is a surprise incident.
And it’s not just a “people problem”. It shows up in the numbers.
Across the industry, more teams have more tooling than ever, yet recovery times are getting worse in many environments. That should make all of us a bit uneasy.
So, where does “being heard” actually break?
Usually in one of three places:
We explain the work, but not the outcome.
We share the plan, but not the trade-offs.
We ask for agreement, but we never confirm understanding.
That last one is the silent killer.
A simple fix: the 3-check confirmation loop
This is the loop I use when the goal is clarity, not applause.
Check 1: One sentence, one outcome. Ask: “If this works, what changes for the customer or the business?”
Example: “We want fewer failed payments during peak hours.” Not: “We want to improve monitoring coverage.”
If you can’t say it in one sentence, the plan is still half-baked. (Or you’ve accidentally written a novel. It happens.)
Check 2: One example from real life. Pick a real workflow people recognise.
Example: “A citizen submits a payment, gets a confirmation, and receives the receipt within 30 seconds.”
Now everyone can see the same movie in their head. That matters.
Check 3: Teach-back, not a quiz. Ask one person to repeat it back in their own words.
Not to catch them out. To catch the message drifting.
If they say something different, great. You’ve found the gap while it is cheap.
Where this breaks
This approach fails in one situation: when people feel unsafe admitting they don’t understand. If questions get punished, people stay quiet, nod, and then do their own version later.
So the real work is cultural: Reward questions. Repeat the outcome. Make it normal to say, “I don’t get it yet.”
One last thought
Systems are getting more complex, not less. More moving parts. More automation. More pressure. That means the cost of “we thought we agreed” keeps rising.
If you want your Signal Drops to be useful, keep bringing it back to this: Did the team actually hear you? And what proof do you have that they did?
Next step: in your next meeting, run the 3-check loop once. One sentence outcome. One real example. One teach-back. Then watch what changes.
Allan
PS: Want the audio version? Listen to the Signal Drop here: [Spotify link]
Can you scale without chaos?
It's peak season, so volume's about to spike. Most teams either hire temps (expensive) or burn out their people (worse). See what smarter teams do: let AI handle predictable volume so your humans stay great.