Why manager communications cascades fail without the right structure

It’s easy to blame the manager when a manager comms cascade breaks down. But there’s a good chance the problem at hand exists long before a manager ever gets an internal message to relay to their team.

During Ragan’s Manager Comms Certificate Course, Dr. Robert Carroll, assistant professor of instruction at The University of Texas at Austin, Moody College of Communication, told the audience that manager comms cascades that fail aren’t broken because cascades don’t work — they simply aren’t built correctly.

“The cascade is one of the most important things we have if we want organizations to function well,” Carroll said. “The problem isn’t that information moves through hierarchy — the problem is that we don’t equip that hierarchy with what it needs to do the work effectively.

“We can’t just throw our hands up and say, ‘Leadership gave me a message and now I have to push it down,’” he said. “That’s not strategy. That’s abdication.”

Carroll said that when alignment fails in a manager comms cascade, it’s often because of the design of the cascade, not the manager’s delivery of the message.