99% of Problems in Business Are Communication Problems
Most organisational failures aren’t caused by bad strategy or poor performance — but by breakdowns in shared understanding. This essay explores why communication sits at the root of so many business problems.
Editorial Note: This essay sits at the heart of Cultivated’s canon. It reflects a long-held observation drawn from years spent inside organisations of all sizes: that most failures attributed to strategy, delivery, culture, or capability are, at their core, failures of communication. Not presentation skills — but shared understanding. Not volume — but clarity.
99% of Problems in Business Are Communication Problems
I often say that ninety-nine percent of problems in business are communication problems.
It isn’t scientifically precise.
It isn’t meant to be.
But after years of watching organisations struggle, stall, and slowly grind themselves down, it feels uncomfortably close to the truth.
Not because people are bad at talking.
But because organisations are complex systems — and meaning degrades quickly inside them.
Most companies can show you an org chart.
Boxes.
Lines.
Reporting structures.
It tells you who sits where.
What it doesn’t show is how work actually gets done.
Work moves sideways.
Diagonally.
Informally.
Through conversations in corridors.
Through favours.
Through assumptions.
Through silence.
It’s inside this invisible web that confusion takes hold.
In small organisations, communication feels effortless.
Everyone knows what’s happening.
Decisions are close to the work.
Context travels naturally.
As organisations grow, structure increases.
More layers.
More systems.
More hand-offs.
And unless communication is deliberately designed, clarity evaporates.
People stop knowing why they are doing something.
They only know what they’ve been told to do.
Many of the problems blamed on “people” are actually problems of design.
Matrix structures that split responsibility without aligning authority.
Systems that store information everywhere and meaning nowhere.
Transformations announced but never explained.
Teams building the wrong thing because no one checked assumptions early enough.
None of these are failures of intelligence.
They are failures of shared understanding.
The most damaging communication failures are rarely dramatic.
They are quiet.
Two managers giving slightly different priorities.
A system no one quite trusts.
A strategy deck that makes sense in isolation but not in practice.
A customer relationship built on assumptions rather than dialogue.
Over time, these gaps widen.
People fill the silence with their own stories.
Assumptions harden into “truth”.
Defensiveness replaces curiosity.
Work slows.
Friction rises.
Organisations often respond by communicating more.
More emails.
More presentations.
More channels.
But volume is not clarity.
In fact, more communication often makes things worse — especially when messages aren’t aligned, repeated, or grounded in reality.
Effective communication is not about efficiency.
It is about sense-making.
Helping people understand:
- what the work is in service of
- what is actually happening
- why it matters
- where they fit
- and what success now looks like
One of the most reliable ways to find communication problems is to follow confusion.
Listen for frustration.
Notice duplication.
Watch where work stalls or circles.
Confusion is rarely random.
It always points somewhere specific:
- a missing decision
- an unclear boundary
- an unspoken assumption
- a leadership blind spot
The uncomfortable truth is this:
Most communication problems originate upstream.
They are created — often unintentionally — by leaders, systems, incentives, and structures.
They cannot be fixed by telling people to “communicate better”.
They are resolved when organisations design for clarity, alignment, and understanding — and when leaders take responsibility for how meaning travels through effective communication behaviours.
Communication is not a soft skill layered on top of work.
It is the work.
When it fails, everything else follows.
And when it works — quietly, consistently, almost invisibly — organisations move faster, with less friction, and far less wasted energy.
This piece forms part of Cultivated’s wider body of work on how ideas become valuable, and how better work is built.
To explore further:
→ Library — a curated collection of long-form essays
→ Ideas — developing thoughts and shorter writing
→ Learn — practical guides and tools from across the work
→ Work with us — thoughtful partnership for teams and organisations
Bibliography
Adu-Oppong, A., 2014. COMMUNICATION IN THE WORKPLACE: GUIDELINES FOR IMPROVING EFFECTIVENESS. Global Journal of Commerce & Management Perspectives G.J.C.M.P., 208–213.
Feeley, T.H., Barnett, G.A., 1997. Predicting Employee Turnover from Communication Networks. Human Communication Research 23, 370–387. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1997.tb00401.x
PAPA, M.J., 1990. Communication Network Patterns and Employee Performance With New Technology. Communication Research 17, 344–368. https://doi.org/10.1177/009365090017003004
Po-An Hsieh, J.J., Wang, W., 2007. Explaining employees’ Extended Use of complex information systems. European Journal of Information Systems 16, 216–227. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000663
Valo, M., Sivunen, A., 2019. Future Directions in Workplace Communication, in: Workplace Communication. Routledge.
Zimmermann, S., Sypher, B.D., Haas, J.W., 1996. A Communication Metamyth in the Workplace: The Assumption that More is Better. The Journal of Business Communication (1973) 33, 185–204. https://doi.org/10.1177/002194369603300206
