Communication Is Not the Engine of Change (And Never Was)

1 May 2026

Dr Leandro Herrero:

Internal communication has mistaken visibility for causality. The result is an industry optimising messages while behaviour remains stubbornly unchanged. If communicators want a future, they must stop managing information and start shaping what actually spreads. “Most internal communication functions are not underperforming; they are perfectly performing a model that no longer explains reality.”

There is a quiet but consequential assumption sitting at the heart of much of the internal communications profession: If people understand the message, they will change their behaviour.

It sounds reasonable. It is also wrong.

This assumption has shaped two decades of practice: clearer messaging, better storytelling, more channels, more engagement, more alignment. And yet, organisations continue to struggle with execution, collaboration, accountability, and change at scale. At some point, the profession has to confront an uncomfortable possibility:

The problem is not execution. The problem is the model.

The Hidden Theory: Communication as Causation

Most internal communication strategies operate on a simple causal chain:

Message → Understanding → Buy-in → Behaviour change

Everything flows from this. If behaviour doesn’t change, the diagnosis is predictable:

• The message wasn’t clear enough
• The narrative didn’t land
• Leaders didn’t communicate consistently
• Employees didn’t engage sufficiently

So the response is equally predictable:

• More communication
• More training
• More frameworks

This is not incompetence. It is logical consistency within a flawed system.

Because if behaviour were primarily driven by instruction, organisations would not struggle with execution. And if it were driven primarily by motivation, engagement scores would correlate strongly with performance. They don’t.

The gap between what is said and what is done is not a communication failure.
It is a misunderstanding of how behaviour actually works.

Behaviour Does Not Follow Communication

People do not change because they have been told, convinced, or inspired.

They change when:

• They see others like them behaving differently
• That behaviour appears safe, effective, and repeatable
• The cost of not adopting becomes socially visible

In other words, behaviour spreads socially, not cognitively. This is not a metaphor. It is closer to epidemiology than to broadcasting.

You can communicate all you like about collaboration, but if the informal network rewards silos, silos will win. You can articulate values with absolute clarity, but if daily micro-behaviours contradict them, the behaviours will define the culture.

Communication can describe, amplify, and sometimes accelerate change.
But it does not create it. Treating communication as the engine of change is like mistaking the scoreboard for the game.

The Real Problem: Change as a Distribution Issue

If behaviour spreads through networks, then change is fundamentally a distribution problem. Not distribution of information. Distribution of behaviour.

This is where the current model collapses.

Most organisations invest heavily in:

• Producing messages
• Packaging narratives
• Cascading information through hierarchy

But behaviour does not cascade.

It moves through informal networks:

• peer-to-peer
• sideways
• through trusted relationships
• often invisible to formal structures

This is where influence lives. And it is largely unmanaged.

Internal communication, as currently practised, is mostly absent from this space.

The Profession at a Crossroads

This is not a critique from the outside. It is a moment of choice from within. The familiar complaint: “we don’t have a seat at the table” misses the point. Seats are not granted. They are taken by relevance. And relevance depends on solving problems that matter.

Right now, the problems organisations care about are not:

• message clarity
• channel optimisation
• content engagement

They are:

• why change doesn’t stick
• why collaboration fails
• why culture resists declared intentions

If internal communication continues to define itself around information, it will become increasingly peripheral. Not because it lacks skill. But because it is solving the wrong problem.

A Different Path

There is another way to think about the role. Not as communicators of messages, but as architects of behavioural spread.

This would require a shift:

From managing content to curating the informal organisation.
From clarity of message to visibility of behaviour.
From top-down cascade to peer-to-peer activation
From engagement metrics to behavioural adoption

This is not a small adjustment. It is a redefinition. It means stepping into territory that is messier, less controllable, and harder to measure. It also happens to be where change actually happens.

The Uncomfortable Conclusion

The current model of internal communication is not failing because it is badly executed. It is failing because it is based on an incomplete view of human behaviour.

Continuing to refine that model — more channels, more content, more creativity — will not fix the gap. It will simply make the “House of Cards” more elegant.

There is, of course, a choice. The profession can continue to optimise the transmission of messages and accept a gradual slide into irrelevance. Or it can confront the harder question:

If communication is not the driver of change, what is our role in shaping what actually spreads?

That question does not come with a ready-made framework. But it does come with a future.

A Final, Uncomfortable Thought

There is a risk the profession won’t like to hear.

If internal communication continues to equate activity with impact — more campaigns, more content, more channels — it may soon find that much of what it produces is no longer scarce, nor particularly valuable. Information is now abundant, cheap, and increasingly automated.

What remains scarce is not messaging. It is behaviour that others choose to imitate.

If communicators stay on the side of information, they will compete with machines.
If they move to the side of behavioural influence, they step into something far more strategic and far harder to ignore.

An Invitation

This is not a call to abandon communication. It is a call to relocate it. To move closer to where change actually happens:

• in micro-behaviours, not messages
• in peer networks, not hierarchies
• in imitation, not instruction

There is space here for a different kind of professional identity. Not the voice of the organisation, but the curator of what spreads within it.

That shift will not come from new tools or better content. It will come from a willingness to question a deeply held assumption: That people change because they have been told.

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Dr Leandro Herrero is Chief Organizational Architect at The Chalfont Project, psychiatrist, author, and international speaker. For over 25 years, he and his team have transformed organizational cultures worldwide through his pioneering Viral Change™ methodology – where a social movement approach creates lasting change. Follow Dr Herrero on LinkedIn for his latest updates.

 

Written by: orlaclancy