I was in a meeting with some company executives in Msasani, listening to one Managing Director complain bitterly about his staff. “These people don’t feel connected to the company,” he said, tapping the table a little. “We’ve put up big billboards on the streets, we’ve paid for radio adverts, but our products still aren’t loved in the market the way we want them to be.” I asked him one small question: “Do your own employees love this company?” Silence. He looked at me as if I’d asked him an old riddle nobody knows the answer to.
The truth is, most businesses don’t collapse on the pitch in front of the customer, they collapse in the office, in front of the employee. Just as a team is built at the training camp before it’s ever seen on the field, a company is built inside before it’s ever seen in the market. When you watch Yanga or Simba playing well on match day, don’t assume it’s just luck of the day. It’s the result of camp, the result of training, the result of what gets discussed in the dressing room that you, the fan, never see. A company is the same. The customer who meets your employee in the shop, in the office, or on the phone, is meeting the product of conversations that happened inside. If there’s confusion inside, confusion will show outside. You can’t hide that, just as you can’t hide a team with no system even if you dress it in a nice jersey.
I once sat with a retired coach, and he told me something I have never forgotten. He said, “Players can play well for you for one season even if they don’t understand the coach, but it doesn’t last.” The same is true for institutions. You can sell for a while even if your employees don’t understand where you’re headed. But only for one season. After that, the fatigue starts to show. Sales dip, customers start asking questions, and you, the boss, are left wondering what happened, while the answer has been sitting on your desk the whole time.
The biggest problem with many bosses is they think one announcement is enough. They spend three months building a heavy strategy, then launch it with a single email and a one-hour meeting, and expect every employee to have understood it, agreed with it, and be ready to execute it the next morning. That’s like teaching a new player a new tactic five minutes before kickoff, then blaming him when he gets it wrong in the sixtieth minute. The game inside a company needs repetition, it needs explanations that reach each person where they stand, not a general announcement broadcast like a national anthem in the morning.
Some companies only listen to their employees once a year, through a long survey of forty questions, after which the results get filed away in a cabinet and life goes on as usual. That’s like a club listening to its fans once a season, after losing five-nil, and then saying it has received the feedback. Real leadership doesn’t listen once a year. It listens every week, in small ways, because an employee wants to know their voice doesn’t end up in a cabinet, it reaches the table.
I asked that Managing Director in Msasani another question: “What do you measure after you send out an internal announcement?” He looked at me in surprise, as though I would asked him whether he measures the April rain. Most don’t measure it. They measure sales, they measure profit, they measure costs, but they don’t measure whether their internal message actually landed, was understood, and was believed. How can you know your team is fine if you don’t even ask the small question? Internal communication without measurement is like training without a stopwatch. You might be running, but you don’t know if you’re improving or standing still.
I have seen companies lose good customers not because their product was bad, but because the employee who picked up the customer’s call didn’t have the right information, or didn’t have the heart to speak well of their own company. You can spend millions on a television advert, and one customer can undo all of it in five minutes of conversation with an employee who doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care. A brand doesn’t live on a billboard, it lives in the voice of the employee at the very last link of the chain.
There’s one more thing many bosses don’t like to admit: an employee who feels heard builds, and one who feels only commanded merely endures. There’s a big difference between a person who works with heart and one who works out of fear of being fired. The first will speak well of their employer even when they’re not around. The second will simply wait for the working hours to end, then walk away carrying nothing of what they saw inside.
So the question isn’t whether internal communication matters. That’s no longer up for debate, just as no one questions whether training matters for a football team. The question is whether leaders are willing to invest time and money into something that doesn’t show up immediately on a profit-and-loss statement, but which, over time, decides whether the business stands or falls. Many companies collapse quietly, not because the market was tough, but because inside the house, there was no single voice.
In the end, I told that Managing Director just one thing: “Before you ask why customers don’t love you, first ask whether your employees love you.” He fell silent for a long while. Perhaps that was the answer he’d been needing since that morning.
