Your Communications Problem Might Actually Be an Information Problem
One of the most common conversations I have with executives starts with a familiar diagnosis. “We need to communicate this better.”
For now I won’t even get into the idea that maybe starting with what the outcome the organisation needs is useful. Let’s presume that has happened.
Strong communication matters and always will. But increasingly, I find myself asking a different question before discussing messages, channels or campaigns. Is the issue really one of communication, or is it a problem with the way information is organised, accessed and experienced?
The distinction matters.
Most organisations devote significant effort to communications. They invest in messaging, stakeholder engagement, or media activity. And while all of these things remain important, the challenge is that stakeholders rarely experience organisations through individual communications activities. They experience them through systems of information.
They navigate numerous channels. They search for answers, compare information from different sources and try to understand who is responsible for what. When those experiences are inconsistent or difficult to navigate, trust can begin to erode long before anyone forms a view about the quality of the messaging itself. At that point, another communications campaign can be a bit like repainting the walls.
Why this matters now
The challenge is becoming more acute because organisations are becoming more complex while stakeholder expectations are becoming simpler. Organisations increasingly operate through interconnected teams, and complexity is understandable. But stakeholders or customers generally do not care which department owns an issue. They simply expect to find what they need quickly and confidently. When they cannot, they rarely conclude that the organisation is complex. More often, they conclude that it is disorganised. That may feel unfair. Unfortunately, reputation is often shaped by stakeholder experience rather than organisational intent.
What leaders often miss
This is where organisations can unintentionally make life harder for themselves. Faced with stakeholder confusion, the instinct is often to produce more communication. More updates, more content, more channels and more activity. Or ‘better’ communication. However, organisations that are already struggling with information overload can end up adding to the problem rather than solving it.
The harder question is whether stakeholders can easily find, understand and trust the information they need.
I worked for a company that had spent significant time and resources already on a rebrand, new strategic narrative, and messaging playbook, when the underlying issue wasn’t any problem with their existing story but that stakeholders were receiving different versions of those messages from different places.
In many organisations, communications teams are increasingly being asked to play a broader role by helping leaders think about how information is structured, governed and experienced across the organisation. That is not because communication has become less important. It is because communication is becoming inseparable from the wider information environment that shapes stakeholder trust.
Why it matters for reputation
This matters for far more than communications effectiveness. When stakeholders struggle to find information, understand responsibilities or navigate processes, they often start making broader judgements about competence, transparency and accountability. If engaging with an organisation feels confusing, fragmented or unnecessarily difficult, many assume the organisation itself operates that way.
Whether fair or not, those experiences become reputation drivers.
For boards and executive teams, this should be a concern because poor information environments create practical consequences. They increase enquiries, generate frustration, slow decision-making and make it harder to build confidence with communities, regulators, employees, customers and investors. Trust is built through experience as much as communication. Stakeholders rarely separate the two.
A better question
Rather than asking whether a campaign is working, leaders might start by asking whether the information environment is working.
“Does the organisation make complexity easier to navigate, or does it ask stakeholders to navigate that complexity themselves?” In my experience, this question often reveals more than simply asking whether communications is working.
The organisations that build trust over the next decade will not necessarily be those producing the most content. They will be the organisations that make complexity easier to navigate.
That sounds obvious. Which probably explains why it is so often overlooked.
Author: Chandran Vigneswaran
