If everything is important, nothing is

There’s growing agreement that the way we communicate at work needs to change. The volume of internal communication, facilitated by email and company-wide news blasts, has increased the noise but decreased connection. An overwhelming number of platforms and apps makes comms less effective, not more.

Most organisations now talk openly about intentional communication, an approach that connects people, purpose and performance with the right message delivered in a timely manner to the people who need to receive it.

And yet, day to day, many still default to doing the opposite.

• Everyone says they want comms clarity, but still default to broadcast messaging

• Everyone talks about focus but rewards speed and visibility, driving poorly considered comms

• Everyone worries about overload but keeps adding channels and confusion.

  
  

The gap between intent and impact isn’t accidental. It’s cultural.

When good intentions meet organisational reality

Most communication strategies don’t fail because they’re poorly designed. They fail because they collide with the unspoken rules of organisational life.

In many workplaces, communication is shaped less by effectiveness and more by reassurance:

• Reaching everyone feels safer than considering who really needs to know

• Saying something quickly feels more responsive than taking time to shape it

• Visibility is rewarded, even when it creates noise that doesn’t engage.

In this context, broadcast becomes the default, not because it works, but because it protects. It reduces perceived risk and is the quicker and easier option, creating cover for the communicator.

Over time, reach starts to matter more than relevance, and reassurance starts to matter more than clarity.

The hidden cost of ‘important’

When everything is labelled as important, people lose the ability to tell what actually requires their attention and action.

This doesn’t create alignment within the organisation, it creates hesitation. People skim instead of read, then ponder instead of taking action. They disengage not through apathy, but through overload and overwhelm.

The irony is that organisations often respond to this by communicating more, reinforcing the very patterns that caused the problem in the first place.

Why intentional communication is harder than it sounds

Intentional communication isn’t just a skill, it’s a cultural shift requiring buy-in across the leadership and management teams.

It asks organisations to replace “just in case” thinking with considered judgement.

To trust people to filter, rather than flooding them to feel safe.

To accept that not everyone needs to know everything, all the time.

That’s uncomfortable. It challenges long-held beliefs about transparency, control and risk. And without changing those underlying assumptions, even the best-intentioned strategies struggle to take hold.

From sending messages to shaping meaning

Turning intentional communication into impactful communication requires a fundamental reframe: from sending information to shaping engagement.

It’s about recognising that attention is finite, and that every message competes not just with other communications, but with the day job itself. When communication is designed without respect for that reality, it becomes part of the problem.

The organisations that make progress are the ones willing to ask challenging questions:

• What does this message really need to achieve?

• Who in our organisation genuinely needs to act on it?

• What happens if we don’t say this to everyone?

These aren’t tactical questions, they’re cultural ones that reflect a confidence in people and their connection to the workplace.

A Work Networks perspective

At Work Networks, we see this tension play out across complex, highly regulated environments, where the instinct to broadcast is strongest, and the cost of overload is highest.

Intentional communication isn’t about being quieter, it’s about being braver. Braver in prioritising, braver in targeting, and braver in trusting people with what truly matters.

The real impact of communication isn’t measured by how widely it’s distributed, but by how clearly it engages and by how effectively it helps the workforce to make informed decisions.

Because when everything is broadcast as important, nothing stands out.