One of the biggest problems I see with today’s industry is the way that corporations rely on “communication” to convince employees that they’re on the right path.

Note: I’m certainly not digging on communication; I believe businesses should be as transparent as they possibly can, because I believe employees have the right to much more information than they’re given, especially in technical fields where executive budgeting decisions can have a huge effect on project direction. I feel like communication of a corporations goals is a bare minimum where both employees and shareholders are concerned. I think it’s a pretty low fucking standard to sincerely communicate the company’s goals in a way that makes sense. Good corporate communication is a requirement in today’s environment.

My point is this: I think that businesses have, for a variety of reasons, stopped at that low bar; in today’s world, that isn’t enough.

Too many executive boards spend too much time discussing how they are going to deliver their message: what words to use, what perfect slides to include in a brief presentation, what they want people to take away from this message. They’ve forgotten that there’s a key step after making the bold announcement: namely, the actions that will be taken to make this announcement reality.

Too many times I’ve seen management forget that ground-level employees hear words, but value actual actions ten-fold. A corporation can announce anything – and they do – but if executives are unable to explain exactly how and what is going to happen, that announcement quickly loses credence and becomes yet another slogan that was “all talk and no walk.”

It’s incredibly important for employees to hold management accountable for promises made; for middle managers to figure out ways to translate the executive vision into actual reality; and for executive management to understand and provide resources to prove to employees that they aren’t all talk. People judge on actions, not words. Anyone can put together a pretty sentence; what’s valuable is actual, real, notable change.