The Executive Voice

When Truth Gets Lost on the Way Up

What happens when leaders are making decisions that come from polished updates and smoothed out facts delivered by their direct reports?

According to Irina Wolpert in a Harvard Business Review article, most mature companies operate as two organisations at once.

The ‘reported organisation’ is the polished version presented through dashboards, board papers, town halls and executive updates.

The ‘lived organisation’ is what employees experience through the quality of the work, team conditions, customer realities and culture.

As information moves up the chain of command, each layer summarises, selects and smooths it. Incentives further shape what gets reported: people learn what leaders reward, welcome or punish.

And here’s the crucial part: Over time, executives may end up governing the version of the company that others have learned to show them, which creates a serious risk: strategy is based on an incomplete picture, and problems surface too late.

To overcome this weakness in how internal teams communicate with leaders, Wolpert argues that the CEO needs direct channels into the lived organisation.

These might include joining operational reviews without the relevant executive present, holding unstructured conversations with employees several layers down, or asking multiple people privately to explain the same decision.

Leaders then need to visibly act on what they hear and show that difficult truths are genuinely valued.

Making an effort to communicate regularly with frontline employees is a valuable use of a leader’s time, especially if you’re looking to make bigger and better strides as a company, because you can’t change what you can’t see.

More in the HBR article.

A Conversation with Jeff Bogensberger

“We’re living in a fascinating time that is both exciting and scary. Technology is moving at such speed, but we’ve also been programmed to accept products that don’t work properly. I can’t remember the last time I signed up for a SaaS product that simply did what the website said it would … “ Read the Q&A, just a three-minute read, but plenty to think about.

Your Trustworthiness Score is Your Biggest Competitive Advantage

Dare I say it? Yes, I will. Delete and get rid of every line that says, “We are your trusted partner.”

It’s a lazy use of persuasion that does nothing to convince your buyer that you’re ‘the one’. Plus your competitors say they’re a trusted partner, too. That line is never a differentiator.

So don’t do it. Be different.

Seek out the customers who trust you and ask them to say it in a testimonial, but only if you’re confident they truly trust you. Just don’t say it yourself. Ever.

Next, reveal, illustrate, or demonstrate how trustworthy you are. It’s important to also show that you’re consistently trustworthy. More on this in next week’s issue.

What got me thinking about ‘trust’ in 2026 was a Forrester research report at the beginning of the year, titled Predictions 2026: Trust Will Be the Ultimate Currency for B2B Buyers. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to click on the link.

Buyers aren’t deciding whether the sales and pursuit team seem like friendly people.

They’re constantly assessing:

And your buyers (and clients) are keeping a trust score of the above.

So, when it comes to trustworthiness, are you a 4/10 or an 8/10?

If a 4/10, is it time to make some changes?

Throw out your vision & mission statements

Instead lead with a message how your company will think, decide and adapt in the second half of 2026.

The three biggest news stories from tech this past week, and what they teach us about the danger of using AI for management decisions, the pitfalls of not anticipating buyers' needs fast enough, and how employees are pushing back at tech’s ongoing focus of relentless profits over people.

Meta Accused of Using AI to Target Employees for Layoffs

Twenty-six Meta employees have launched legal action alleging the company used an AI system that disproportionately selected workers who had taken protected medical or family leave or requested disability accommodations. The employees are seeking to halt their dismissals due to begin on 22 July. Meta of course, denied using AI.

What’s Really Being Communicated
Whether the claims about Meta’s use of AI are proven or not, they give other tech leaders reason to tread carefully when using AI to inform management decisions about their people. Otherwise, companies risk legal action, reputational damage and losing focus on their mission and priorities.

IBM Underestimated Buyer Shift & Failed to Adapt Fast Enough

IBM issued a rare profit warning after customers shifted spending away from software and towards the chips, servers, storage and memory needed to support AI. CEO Arvind Krishna admitted that IBM had underestimated the speed of the shift and failed to adapt quickly enough. Its shares fell by around 25%, wiping approximately US$69 billion from its market value.

What’s Really Being Communicated
Does the IBM situation suggest traditional tech companies are out of touch with their customers? At the very least, it’s a signal to listen more carefully to what customers and buyers want, and where they’re heading, rather than selling them what companies think they need.

Google Employees Demand Greater Layoff Protections

More than 4,500 Google employees have signed a petition calling for guaranteed severance, voluntary exit packages before compulsory redundancies and greater consideration of alternatives to job cuts. Employees argue that “these layoffs and cuts … are “simply profit being put over the people that make this company run.” The petition also calls for an end to performance quotas being used to justify workforce reductions. At a press conference, workers also chanted, “Google, Google, you can’t hide, we can see your greedy side.”

What’s Really Being Communicated
Tech workers are becoming more emboldened in challenging leadership over how and why jobs are being cut, especially when “workforce realignment” appears to be driven by greed. But will it force tech companies to change? I doubt it.

Phrase of the Week

The Reverse Information Paradox: Satya Nadella argues that “today's AI ecosystem creates a one-sided flow of information, where model providers learn how their customers operate with every interaction. Over time, that accumulated learning becomes a significant advantage.". if you want to protect your core IP, read his article abut the Reverse Information Paradox in this post on X.

The answer to your first question is often the safe, polished or expected one. To get closer to what people really think, ask again from another angle.

Employees
First: “How are things going?”
Then: “What’s making your job harder than it should be?”

Current clients
First: “Are you happy with the service?”
Then: “Where are we creating extra work for your team?”

Buyers
First: “What matters most in this decision?”
Then: “What would make you uncomfortable recommending us internally?”

The second question matters because it moves people away from generalities and towards experience, risk and reality.

Communicate differently by changing the angle of the question, being specific and, most importantly, making it safe for people to answer honestly.

That’s how leaders uncover the lived organisation, sellers understand the real buying concern, and suppliers learn what clients may not easily volunteer.

If this helped you think differently about communication, forward this newsletter to someone who leads, sells or explains complex ideas in tech.