Comms Gone Rogue: Why Communicating More Won’t Fix Your Communication Problem

Every communications professional has experienced some version of this scenario: a stakeholder reaches out convinced the organization “isn’t hearing enough” about their initiative and proposes the obvious solution — more communication. More emails. More articles. An internal newsletter titled The Daily Download because all good communication requires alliteration, or a video series called Client Care on Air that felt far more exciting during the brainstorm than it did by episode three.

(Yes, those two were mine. We live and learn.)

The request usually comes from a good place. Teams care deeply about their work. They want visibility, adoption, engagement, and support. They’re trying to solve real business problems and occasionally doing it by personifying customer satisfaction scores with a full-sized mannequin named Jack. (This one still haunts me.)

As communicators, we hear it all the time: “We just need to communicate this more.” Sometimes that’s true. More often, though, the issue isn’t a lack of communication. It’s a lack of clarity, prioritization, or strategy.

Employees today are already navigating a constant stream of emails, chats, intranet articles, meetings, town halls, and “friendly reminder” follow-ups while trying to do their actual jobs. Every initiative believes it is important. But eventually, everything sounds equally urgent and employees stop knowing what actually matters.

Communication Needs Direction, Not Just Volume

Communication without strategy is like a river without its banks. It spreads everywhere instead of moving intentionally in one direction.

Someone shared that analogy with me years ago and I’ve used it ever since to describe one of the most important roles communicators play inside organizations. We create the structure, alignment, and consistency that help communication flow clearly.

The goal is not to stop communication from happening — nobody wants to become the corporate equivalent of a crossing guard with a whistle and clipboard. The goal is to create enough direction that employees know where to go, what to trust, and what actually requires action.

Communicators are often one of the only groups looking across an organization’s entire ecosystem. We see the overlap, duplication, competing priorities, and growing fatigue long before others do. While individual teams are understandably focused on their own initiatives, communicators are responsible for protecting the employee experience as a whole.

That means our job is not simply to create more content. It’s to create clarity people can count on.

What Your Stakeholders Are Actually Asking For

At a former organization, we used a platform that created personalized newsletters for employees based on their roles and the content streams they subscribed to, all linked back to the intranet as the single source of truth. We also had curated leader communications managed centrally through the communications team.

Despite all of that, stakeholders still regularly approached us wanting to launch standalone newsletters for their own initiatives.

What made those conversations interesting was that the request was almost never actually about the newsletter itself. Once we slowed down and unpacked the need, the real issue was usually visibility, influence, or speed.

Stakeholders often felt employees did not fully understand the value of their work or worried their initiative was not getting enough attention. Other times, they were frustrated by processes that felt slow and believed creating their own communication channel would give them more control. (And sometimes they just wanted their project to feel important enough to deserve its own logo and email banner.)

That distinction matters because “rogue communications” are often less about rebellion and more about unmet needs.

Sometimes, stakeholders are surfacing legitimate blind spots in the organization’s communication strategy. Other times, they are simply trying to work around governance because creating a new channel feels easier than navigating existing processes. Either way, communicators need to approach those situations with curiosity before jumping straight to policy enforcement.

When Communication Starts Competing With Itself

One of the biggest risks of decentralized communication is that organizations slowly create competing sources of truth. Teams duplicate information, updates become inconsistent, and outdated messages continue circulating long after processes have changed. Employees stop knowing which channels are official and which information is current.

The irony is that the attempt to improve communication often creates more confusion instead.

One of the biggest advantages of the centralized newsletter strategy I mentioned earlier was that everything linked back to the intranet. If information changed, employees always had access to the most current version. Standalone newsletters broke that connection and created the risk of outdated information sitting in inboxes indefinitely, alongside the 14 other emails employees flagged to “come back to later” and absolutely never did.

There is also a measurement problem that comes with communication sprawl. When every team launches its own channel, analytics become fragmented and organizations end up measuring communication volume instead of communication effectiveness.

And in keeping with our newsletter example, I’ve never heard someone say they wish they received more of them. More often, employees say they feel overwhelmed, missed something important, or are unsure which information is current.

Governance Without Becoming the ‘Comms Police’

If you’re leaning back in your chair, trying to decide who on your team is going to play the role of newsletter enforcement officer, stay with me a bit longer.

What worked best for us was not stricter control, but a stronger partnership. All communication requests came through a centralized intake process followed by a needs assessment conversation with a member of our communications team. Those conversations shifted the discussion away from outputs and toward outcomes.

Instead of immediately debating whether a newsletter should exist, we would ask:

• What problem are you trying to solve?
• Who actually needs this information?
• What action are you hoping employees take?
• Why is this the right channel?

Often, those conversations changed the direction entirely. Sometimes, a dedicated communication approach truly was necessary. Other times, we could solve the problem more effectively through existing enterprise channels, leader messaging, or targeted campaigns already integrated into the broader employee experience.

The goal was never to shut people down. It was to protect organizational attention while still helping teams succeed.

Policies and governance absolutely matter, particularly when they establish clear ownership, approval processes, and official communication channels. But policy alone rarely solves the underlying issue. If teams still feel unsupported, unheard, or unable to move quickly enough through existing channels, they will almost always find another workaround.

Humans are remarkably creative when trying to avoid intake forms. Remember Jack?

The Real Role of Communicators

Modern communicators are navigating an attention economy inside their own organizations. Every initiative wants visibility. Every project believes it deserves priority. Every leader wants employees to engage more deeply with their work.

Our value is not measured by views, clicks, or the number of newsletters we produce. It is measured by whether communication helps people understand, prioritize, and take action — and whether it actually influences the behaviors we are trying to drive.

Sometimes that means saying yes to a new channel. More often, it means helping organizations move from communication volume to communication intention.

Because the role of communicators is not to create more noise. It is to create clarity that people can count on.