The Telephone Game Isn’t Funny Anymore

Sarah L. Manley Robertson, SCMP®, CIIC, Prosci®, ABC:

We’re sitting cross-legged in a circle on a shag carpet; wood paneling on the walls. Our stacked component stereo humming in the background – Eye of the Tiger playing just loud enough to feel important. Hair feathered and crimped.

Someone leans in and starts the game.
“Don’t tell anyone I have a crush on Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran.”
It moves in whispers; halfway through, it’s already off.
“Don’t tell anyone Simon Le Bon got crushed at dinner.”
By the time it comes back, its barely recognizable.
“Tell everyone Donna crushed a bone at Simon’s.”

And the room erupts. Laughter, disbelief, everyone talking over each other about how it got so twisted. That was the point. We expected the distortion. It was harmless fun.

But today, we’re sitting in offices and cubicles. We’re wearing suits.
Increase the speed. Insert AI. Raise the stakes.

For line managers, it can still feel like they’re getting piecemeal sentences whispered amidst a constant stream of noise.

The distortion isn’t funny anymore.

It shows up as rework, misalignment, and pointless effort.

Line managers are left to defend unclear direction, absorb the frustration of their teams, and be held accountable for outcomes they can’t fully control. They’re constantly answering for gaps they didn’t create and being judged on outcomes they were never set up to deliver.

Line managers are not just a rung in the hierarchy: they are where strategy either becomes real or unravels. Research from Gallup shows that managers account for the majority of variance in team engagement. Work from Prosci® reinforces that while employees expect to hear about organizational direction from senior leaders, they rely on their direct manager to understand what change means for them. And trust data from Edelman consistently identifies managers as one of the most credible sources of information inside organizations.

And yet, across industries, they remain one of the most under-enabled groups in the organization.

In practice, the most critical work runs through this role. They are reconciling what hasn’t been resolved by leadership: filling gaps, removing ambiguity from strategy, and making judgment calls on what matters most.

And the result isn’t immediate failure. It’s harder to detect. It shows up as:

• Alignment in meetings, but not in implementation.
• Teams moving quickly, but not in the same direction.
• Workarounds replacing the intended ways of working.

The work gets done. But it doesn’t move the business forward.

So, someone decides we need to “enable” managers with more content: more decks, more talking points, more materials to cascade.

That misses the point.

Managers don’t need more to say. They need to be able to operate. Enabling managers means strengthening four things:

1. Capability: understanding priorities, trade-offs, and what matters most in the context of the business
2. Capacity: a realistic view of what they are expected to carry and what can be deprioritized
3. Confidence: the ability to answer questions and make decisions without constant escalation
4. Credibility: alignment between what they are asked to communicate and what actually holds in day-to-day operations

This is where Internal Communications must emerge as a strategic business driver advocating for and equipping line managers to carry strategy into implementation and results. That is operational relevance.

We must:

• stop allowing organizational debt to be pushed down to line management.
• not move direction forward until we can explain it, prioritise it, and act on it without guesswork.
• answer the questions line management will be asked before they are put in front of their teams. What’s changing? What matters most? What can wait? What does this mean for how work gets done?
• refuse to package competing priorities and call it alignment: we force decisions on what takes precedence.
• make the “why” usable: clear rationale we and line managers can stand behind when challenged.
• prepare (think role play) managers to lead, not just relay.

This is the work of Internal Communications in collaboration with People & Culture, Learning & Development, PMO, and Strategy.

We are one of the only functions that sees how decisions travel and where they lose coherence.

Internal Communications is where work is understood, translated, and carried forward across the organization.

Managers are where strategy either becomes real or drifts into an early teen telephone game.

If line managers are left to interpret instead of lead into action, the system remains under strain, and the strategy remains at risk.

And if Internal Communications is not actively enabling them, then we are not operationally relevant and we are not working on the part of the system that matters most.

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Sarah L. Manley Robertson is President and Founder of Prospect Strategies, Limited, and is a Strategic Columnist.