Communication Isn’t What You Say. It’s What Happens Next.

In October 2020, I had the privilege of hearing Tim Wise speak at the City of Tallahassee’s annual race relations summit. Wise is a prolific author and one of the most incisive thinkers on race, language, and institutional behavior in the country. He said something early in his talk that I have not stopped thinking about since:

“The words you use inform the strategies you choose.”

He kept returning to the phrase throughout his presentation, applying it to how institutions talk about race, equity, and community. But as I sat there, I realized the principle extends far beyond that context. It applies to every domain where leaders use language to frame problems, define stakeholders, and set direction — which is to say, it applies to everything leaders do.

A few years earlier, I had encountered a complementary idea from a very different source. Mark Horstman of Manager Tools, drawing on Peter Drucker’s essay “Information, Communications, and Understanding,” distilled Drucker’s argument into one sentence:

“Communication is what the listener does.”

These two ideas — Wise’s and Drucker’s — sit on opposite ends of the same insight. One addresses the input side of communication: the words you choose shape the strategies you pursue. The other addresses the output side: communication succeeds only when it produces action in the listener.

Most leaders focus on neither. And that gap explains a remarkable amount of organizational dysfunction.

The input side: your labels become your strategy

Consider something as simple as what an organization calls the people it serves.

A city government that refers to its residents as “rate-payers” will build systems optimized for transactional efficiency — billing accuracy, service delivery speed, complaint resolution. A city government that refers to those same people as “community members” will build systems that also account for engagement, inclusion, and long-term relationship. (See also: Why Your Engagement Efforts Are Making Things Worse.)

Neither label is wrong. But they produce different strategies, different metrics, and different organizational cultures. The label came first. The strategy followed.

The same is true internally. An organization that calls its people “workers” will design different systems than one that calls them “team members” or “professionals” or “associates.” How you describe your strategic advantages will influence how you leverage them. How you label your challenges will shape how you tackle them.

This is not wordsmithing. This is strategic architecture disguised as vocabulary.

In my work with organizations pursuing Baldrige-based performance excellence, this shows up with striking clarity. The Organizational Profile — the foundational document that describes who you are, what you do, and how you operate — forces leaders to choose their words carefully. And the organizations that get the most value from the process are the ones that recognize those word choices as strategic decisions, not editorial ones.

When a healthcare system categorizes its patients into “acute care,” “chronic management,” and “wellness” segments, it has made three strategic commitments about how resources, processes, and attention will be allocated. The categories came first. The operating model followed.

The output side: if nobody acts, you didn’t communicate

Now consider the other end. You’ve chosen your words carefully. You’ve crafted your message. You’ve delivered it. Did you communicate?

Drucker would say: not yet. Not until the listener does something.

This is where most organizational communication fails — not in composition, but in design. Leaders treat communication as transmission. I said the thing. I sent the email. I posted the announcement. Communication complete.

But if communication is what the listener does, then the measure of success is not whether the message was sent. It is whether behavior changed.

Here is a practical example. In a staff meeting, a leader announces: “HR has updated our policy on parental leave. It’s posted on the portal.”

That is information transfer. It is not communication. Nothing will happen. Most people in the room will not read the policy. The ones who do will forget the details within a week.

Now imagine the same leader says: “HR has updated our policy on parental leave — it’s posted on the portal. It’s a meaningful improvement to our benefits package, and I want every person on this team to read it and understand it. I’d like each of you to make sure your direct reports have read it by the end of the month. I’m going to randomly survey ten percent of our staff on the key provisions. Whoever scores highest gets my parking space for a week.”

Same information. Completely different communication. The second version defines an intended action, creates a mechanism for follow-through, and introduces a light accountability structure. It also signals something about the leader’s values — that benefits matter, that awareness matters, and that communication is not a passive exercise.

The discipline that ties both sides together

When you combine Wise’s insight with Drucker’s, you get a discipline that is simple to describe and transformative to practice.

Before you communicate, ask two questions: (See also: The Most Expensive Leadership Mistake Is the Question You Didn’t Ask.) (See also: The Three Rs of Leadership.)

First: What words am I choosing, and what strategy do they imply? Are you framing a challenge as a “cost problem” or a “value problem”? Are you describing a reorganization as “efficiency improvement” or “capability building”? The frame you choose will determine the solutions people generate. Choose deliberately.

Second: What do I want the listener to do, and how will I know they did it? If you cannot answer this, you are not communicating. You are broadcasting. Define the intended action. Make it specific. Measure it — even informally.

A practical way to build this discipline into daily leadership:

• Always have an agenda when you meet with a person or group. Not a list of topics — a list of intended outcomes.
• For each item, identify the action you want and how you could measure it. Not every item needs formal measurement. But the act of defining the intended action changes how you present it.
• Always measure the most important items, and randomly measure the rest. This creates a culture where communication carries weight. People learn that when you say something, you mean it — and you’ll follow up.

Why this matters now

In a world of information overload, remote and hybrid teams, and chronic meeting fatigue, the bar for communication that actually produces action has never been higher. Leaders are communicating more than ever — more emails, more Slack messages, more all-hands meetings, more town halls — and yet clarity about expectations is declining. Gallup reports that only 46% of employees feel clear about what is expected of them, down from 56% in 2020.

We are communicating more and connecting less. The volume went up. The intentionality did not.

Tim Wise reminded me that the words we choose are not neutral — they are strategic commitments. Peter Drucker reminded me that communication without action is just noise. Together, they describe a leadership discipline that costs nothing to implement and changes everything about how an organization operates.

The words you use inform the strategies you choose. And communication is what the listener does.

Start there, and everything downstream gets better.