“Gary Said.” Oh No He Didn’t.

About eight or nine years ago, when I was still serving as an executive director, I was walking through the floor where our full team sat. I wasn’t eavesdropping. I was just passing through: restroom, coffee machine, mailbox (we still had mailboxes then).

I heard someone say: “Gary said we have to work with 38 schools this year.”

My pace slowed dramatically, although I’m proud that I didn’t skid to a halt, slack jawed.

Gary had never said any such thing.

Not only had Gary never said that. Gary would never have said that. I wasn’t the kind of leader who handed down a number and said, “Meet it.”

I felt that familiar ice-water-in-the-face leadership awakening. Wait. What?

Then something else happened (thank you to my coach at the time). Instead of jumping in to correct the issue on the spot, I took a deep breath, kept walking (OK – I was going to the restroom), and got curious.

How had we gotten here? Before I started correcting based on a snap judgment, what was the problem? Was I seeing the entire issue or the tip of the iceberg?

At the time, I had been talking about a shift in our strategy – hypothetically focusing more attention on our most impactful programs and where they were needed most. I thought the discussion was about expanding thoughtfully and sustainably. I convened strategy conversations with the board, senior team, partners and the entire staff. I made fancy presentations. 

How did all that thoughtful discussion turn into a number – a number that didn’t connect to these discussions in any way I could puzzle out?

What began as a series of strategic conversations about intentional growth had apparently arrived, at the far end of the organization, as a mandate: X number of schools. Period. No discussion. Just do it.

To be clear, I didn’t care about being misquoted. I had gotten used to that over my years managing and leading. It was more about the message underneath this misquoting – some combination of strategic confusion and perceived authoritarian leadership.

I knew that research on organizational sensemaking is clear that strategy is not simply “communicated” and automatically internalized across the organization. It is interpreted through layers of leadership, each of which absorbs, reinterprets, and passes it along – a beautiful game of telephone in your very own organizational playground.

Where was our game of telephone breaking down? Where was the messaging being misinterpreted on its way to people delivering our programs?

Of course, it was most important to start with a good look in the mirror. Don’t get me started on leaders who go on about the many ways their team isn’t “ready” for their message. The brave choice is to walk toward the problem, not figure out how to explain it away.

My reflection led me to clarify in a few ways, starting with my leadership team.

Leadership Team Alignment

Although we agreed overall, we weren’t interpreting and translating the direction in the same way as it traveled to the various teams. It was a good reminder that the beginning of the journey involves turning vision into strategy, then strategy into goals, then goals into objectives, tactics, and action plans.

At each of those steps, aspects of the vision that aren’t commonly understood lead to forks in the road for leaders at all levels of the organization.  Will they stray further from the vision or move toward it? Each step is a node in a decision tree that leaders and managers map out every day.

These confusions may indicate that issues were not sufficiently debated or that subpar decisions occurred in the rush of getting things done.

So, “Gary said” may have been a series of “close enough” or “Gee, I thought that’s what we meant” decisions that pulled everyone further from the core of the vision and strategy.

• Had we stayed connected on where there might be disconnects during team meetings and my one-on-ones?

•  Had we agreed on how we would talk about strategy with teams, not just on what we were doing?

•  Had there been a space to openly share when we felt we didn’t have enough information or needed help with the translation ourselves?

The Next Level

I continued my reflection and excavation. What would happen if someone carrying the message wasn’t fully convinced that the vision and strategy were something they could get behind? That’s to be expected in change management, and this could be a symptom of that.

Was there an implicit, “I think this is a bad direction” before the “Gary said” that was happening after the leadership team thought everything was hunky dory?

At this level of translation, ideas are turning into new realities for managers who are carrying the burden of their team experiencing changes to their everyday routines and seeking more clarity or resisting the sheer newness of it all.

• Does the manager involved have enough agreement, desire, and information to respond when someone on the team asks, “Why?”

•  Can they turn this into a new task or process for their team?

•  When they experience disconnects, do they feel safe and empowered enough to raise this issue with their supervisor or during broader leadership meetings? Research on psychological safety tells us that when people don’t feel comfortable questioning, clarifying, or disagreeing openly, they default to silence or compliance.

If you can’t say, “I’m not sure that’s what he means,” you might say, “He says.”

Ownership

There’s another important layer here that I also hear about often in my work with clients.

It’s the question of accountability. In our communication of ideas, we signal where ownership lies.

Leaders can say, “We’ve decided…” or “Our strategy calls for…” all day long to convey that strategy is a “we” issue, not an “I” issue.  

On the other hand, when a team member says, “The CEO wants…” or “Gary said…” the ownership shifts away from the speaker. They send accountability upwards rather than owning the decision as part of the ‘we’ that has set the new direction.

• Where in the chain of accountability has there been a breakdown?

•  If someone feels like they cannot fully own a goal, do they speak up?

•  Is there ample space for discussing shared accountability in our team meetings?

•  Are there practices to surface when there are disconnects?

•  Are managers trained and supported in translating vision into new processes and systems?

We want every level of the organization to co-author strategy with us, not just relay the Cliff Notes version of the new direction.

The Path Forward

After all that reflection (which took just a couple of good conversations and 30 minutes of alone time), I thought about how to start the change. I knew that patterns like these can develop quickly and then take forever to turn around.

So, obviously (I hope), I didn’t issue a corrective memo titled “Things Gary Did Not Say” or administer a pop quiz on our strategy at the next all staff meeting.

Instead:

• We began making more space at the senior team level to debate priorities and align on communication. We initiated a quarterly offsite meeting to review progress of the last quarter, debate productively over priorities for the coming quarter, agree on language to communicate priorities and define what success would look like.

• I also spent more time with the next layer down – not to usurp my team’s authority, but to elevate strategic dialogue, make room for questions, and learn more about the obstacles to execution.

Oh – and I kept the “Gary said” story to myself (until now). No need to make anyone feel bad about something that I was responsible for, ultimately.

Why tell you all this?

That experience was nearly a decade ago, but it has stuck with me. And in my consulting and coaching work now, I hear versions of my “walk by the program team” experience frequently.

I talk to CEOs who are surprised by how their words are misinterpreted.

I talk to senior teams who say they are aligned but then describe the work in slightly different ways. Some realize that they may not have ironed out their disagreements. Others see the game of telephone that happens as vision travels through each of their teams to the front lines. Some are just too busy to notice.

A Simple Diagnostic

If you want to test whether and how this might happen in your organization, listen for a few signals:

• Listen to the language the team chooses. Do leaders speak in collective language (“we” statements), or do they default to some version of “the boss said”?

• Notice the quality of dialogue. When strategy comes up, do you hear debate, clarification, and group reflection? Or does the conversation slide quickly into tactics and task lists or – worse – silence?

• Watch for dissent and learning.  If you are the leader, does anyone raise concerns about your direction? Does anyone say, “I’m not sure that’s what we mean,” or share what they’re learning as implementation unfolds? If not, do you ask?

If you are not experiencing thoughtful debate and disagreement among team members and with you, you probably have some alignment work to do.

That work will start with an invitation to slow down on occasion and invite all perspectives. This can be hard for leaders who are used to sharing vision and strategy more than they sometimes have a chance to listen. It takes some adjustment, but it’s worth it.

The work is to build a senior team capable of leading the entire organization in the learning and alignment process alongside you until the message you send becomes richer, not more rigid, on its journey through the organization.

That is the work I now spend much of my time doing with senior teams. Let me know if you would like to talk. You can email me at gary@garybagley.com or DM me on LinkedIn.