CEOs have podcasts. Executives have newsletters. Employees have audiences. Your new hire can post a “day in the life” TikTok before HR has finished onboarding them. An internal Slack message can become an external story before the communications team knows there is a story.
Your company has many more ways to tell its story, and more people who can contradict it.
Companies once had more control over which stories reached the public. Now employees, customers and candidates can compare notes in public. The polished version from corporate comms has to compete with what people actually experience.
I was talking about this recently on my own podcast, The CEO Daily Brief with my co-host John Frehse. John made the point that the easier communication gets, the harder it is to be heard. AI can write the LinkedIn post, draft the CEO email, create the blog and turn a meeting into twelve pieces of content before lunch.
But producing more polished language doesn’t resolve the gap between what a company says and what people experience. It can make that gap more visible.
In that environment, an opinion about leadership carries more weight when you can show how you’ve put it into practice. I’ve started calling that ‘thought doership.’
Thought leadership tells me what you think. Thought doership tells me what you did—and what happened because of it.
If you believe in listening, tell me about the employee feedback that changed your decision. If you believe in accountability, tell me what happened when you missed your own commitment. Those stories carry weight because there is something in them a reader can examine, question and learn from. They make your beliefs visible through your decisions. They also give employees a reason to believe the next thing you say.
For leaders, that changes the question from “How do we communicate our culture?” to “What evidence do people have for the culture we say we want?”
And no, you do not need to create an authenticity task force.
Start with a contradiction your employees already recognize. The unnecessary approval process in a company that claims to empower people. The incentive that rewards individual wins while leadership preaches collaboration. The crappy behavior everyone tolerates from someone who delivers results.
Address it. Explain the decision. Let people experience the difference before you ask them to celebrate it.
You don’t have to wait until the company is perfect to talk about its culture. You can say what’s working, what isn’t, and what you’re doing about it. But acknowledging a problem only earns credibility if people see you act on it.
Your employees already know how much of your culture story is true. Make your next decision give them a better story to tell.
Elsewhere In Culture
Amazon’s Boomerang Bet with John Frehse
Amazon laid off tens of thousands of people. Now it’s reaching back out to some of the people who left, particularly those who walked because of return-to-office policies. I talked about this with my co-host John Frehse, and he made an important distinction: there isn’t necessarily a shortage of talent. There’s a shortage of exceptional talent. The best people have options, and companies using layoffs as a blunt instrument may discover too late exactly who they let walk. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000793219590 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2oQPlswwr5CbfG2wwGXXLX?si=f2e259a28f474c99
The Mattering Effect with John Miles
I sat down with John Miles, author of The Mattering Effect, to talk about what he calls the “slow fade”: when people get so good at being useful that they slowly lose connection to why any of it matters. I pushed him on whether it’s really a company’s job to help employees find meaning. His answer stuck with me. People need to feel valued, but they also need to see the value they create. That line of sight may be one of the most overlooked drivers of engagement. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000793416284 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2R9DVAxi9SlyxdS1QffpVn?si=a79e4c72ee4d4053
Strong Results Gave Frank Vella Permission Not to Follow the Crowd with Frank Vella
I revisited my conversation with Constant Contact CEO Frank Vella about why he resisted the pressure to force employees back into the office. His reasoning was refreshingly simple: working virtually was working. He had the results to prove it. Leadership isn’t following the crowd because everyone else suddenly thinks they have the leverage. It’s looking at your people, your data and your results and having the confidence to act accordingly. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000793631931 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5NhtrQBjJVroy4NVCTIjUa?si=63b3719f58cd4da8
And coming later this week…
Culture Ate Strategy for Breakfast with Dave Mowry
I sat down with Breg CEO Dave Mowry, who told me he attributes 50% to 60% of the company’s improvement from roughly $17 million to nearly $50 million in EBITDA to employee engagement and support. But the line I can’t stop thinking about was this: asking HR to fix culture is like asking finance to increase revenue. Exactly. Culture isn’t an HR initiative. It’s how people throughout the organization think and act to get results, and leaders can’t delegate ownership of that.
The Easier Communication Gets, the Harder It Is to Be Heard with John Frehse
I talked with my co-host John Frehse about a strange paradox: we have more ways to communicate than ever, and somehow it’s getting harder to say anything anyone remembers. AI is only accelerating that. When everyone can create polished content instantly, polish stops being differentiating. What cuts through is lived experience: the weird meeting, the uncomfortable conversation, the absurd corporate ritual everyone recognizes but nobody says out loud
Last week in The Work Signal, I dug into the jobs report and a strange ritual we’ve all accepted: a preliminary estimate comes out, markets move billions of dollars and leaders start making decisions as if the number is fact.
Then it gets revised.
So what should leaders actually be paying attention to?