The gap between what leadership announces and what employees actually know isn't a communication problem. It's a systems problem.   Information gets filtered, blocked, and lost at every organizational level. Understanding why this happens and what both senders and receivers can do about it is the difference between aligned teams and constant confusion. The Real Cost of Information Loss Last October, I started getting urgent requests about project updates. Teams needed to account for a major software change coming in the next release. The problem? That change had been delayed five months earlier. The February announcement reached everyone. The May delay only reached a handful of managers. Those managers had competing priorities. The delay fell off their radar. By October, multiple teams were still planning for the original timeline. They had no idea anything changed. Nobody was lazy. Nobody deliberately dropped the ball. The information just stopped moving. This happens in your ...

We hired two engineers the same year. Both bets. Only one paid off. The first was passionate about games. Knew all the techniques and theories. Could talk for hours about game design. But when it came to writing code, he struggled. He knew the basics but couldn't apply the concepts. A bet that passion would translate to skill. That on-the-job training would close the gap faster than it did. After a year, he was barely adequate. We had to let him go. The second hire was technically capable. No social skills. No apparent passion for games. A bet that technical ability mattered more than enthusiasm. That person became one of the team's favorites. Both were leadership decisions based on incomplete information. Both were educated guesses about what would happen. Only one hypothesis held up. That's how leadership decision-making actually works. You're not making certainties. You're making testable bets and watching what happens. The Leadership Uncertainty Paradox: ...

At standup, the team made a call. The feature they needed wouldn't be ready in time, but they found an undocumented API that could work. Problem solved. Deadline safe. Two months later, they went through the full release process again. And external testing. And additional regulatory costs. The workaround didn't work across all jurisdictions. The customer complained. Engineers are highly trained problem solvers. You're amazing at finding problems to solve and finding solutions to them. That's what makes you valuable. It's also what gets you in trouble. The problem with being good at problems When you see a problem, you solve it. That's the job, right? Not always. The team saw a clear problem: the platform feature wouldn't be ready before the deadline. They identified a solution using an undocumented API. They executed and hit the date. But they never asked if the date mattered. Product management was never consulted about waiting one month. No one asked ...