A conversation with Ann Melinger, bink, and Tim Vaughan, Poppulo.
Organizations are constantly trying to drive change. When those efforts stall, the first instinct is often to improve the communication. Leaders ask for another campaign, clearer messaging, more manager toolkits or more frequent updates.
Those actions can certainly help, but only if communication is actually the problem.
Too often, employees understand exactly what leaders are asking them to do. The real barrier is that leadership behaviors, organizational systems or incentives continue reinforcing the old way of working. When that's the case, no amount of additional messaging can close the gap between what employees hear and what they experience.
To better understand why change efforts succeed or stall, bink conducted the Culture at Work Study, surveying 300 practitioners across internal communications, HR, executive leadership, employee experience and organizational strategy. Distributed in partnership with Poppulo, the study explored how culture shapes a company’s ability to navigate change and why alignment between leadership behavior, organizational systems and communication matters.
One of the strongest themes to emerge from the research was that organizations often mistake communication challenges for broader organizational issues. In this conversation, Tim Vaughan of Poppulo speaks with Ann Melinger, CEO of bink, about how communicators can recognize the difference, diagnose the real barrier to change and help leadership focus on the issues communication alone cannot solve.
Tim Vaughan: Your Culture at Work Study suggests organizations often mistake culture problems for communication problems. What did your research uncover?
Ann Melinger: One of the things that stood out most in the research is how often organizations struggle to distinguish between communication challenges and deeper organizational barriers.
That confusion is understandable because communication is highly visible, and it's relatively easy to change. Leaders can quickly ask for another campaign, clearer messaging or more manager communication. Those are visible actions, and they create the sense that progress is being made because there's something concrete to point to.
What our research suggests is that many organizations move too quickly to improve communication before they've diagnosed whether communication is the issue. The more important conversation is often about whether leadership behaviors, organizational systems or incentives are actually reinforcing the change the organization is trying to achieve.
When change stalls, the questions leaders should be asking aren't just, Did we communicate this clearly? They should also be asking: Are employees empowered to work differently? Do our processes support the new behaviors? Are leaders consistently modeling the change? What behaviors are we really rewarding?
Our research suggests many organizations aren't having those conversations. In fact, 55% of respondents agreed there is often internal confusion over what is a culture problem versus an internal communications problem.
To me, that finding says many organizations don't have a shared understanding of where stalled change efforts should be addressed. Is the answer better communication, or is it broader organizational change?
Communication plays a critical role in helping employees understand what's changing and why it matters. But communication can't close the gap between what leaders say and what employees experience. That's where leadership behavior, organizational systems and incentives come in. When those things are aligned, communication becomes incredibly powerful. When they aren't, communication often gets blamed for problems it was never designed to solve.
Tim Vaughan: How can communicators recognize a genuine messaging issue?
Ann Melinger: A genuine messaging issue usually means employees don't yet have the information or context they need to succeed. They may not fully understand the strategy, they may be unclear about what's changing, or they may not know what the change means for their own role and day-to-day decisions.
One question I encourage communicators to ask is this: Could employees clearly explain what's changing, why it's changing and what it means for their own role? If the answer is no, communications still has important work to do. Employees can't act on a strategy they don't understand.
If the answer is yes, but behavior still isn't changing, it's time to start looking beyond the message.
That's an important distinction because interpretation gaps are real. One of the more surprising findings in our study was that only 7% of respondents said leadership communications are always interpreted as intended.
Even when leaders believe they've communicated clearly, employees often interpret the same message in very different ways. That's why effective internal communication isn't simply about publishing information. It's about creating shared understanding through clear narratives, manager conversations and ongoing dialogue that helps people connect the strategy to their own work.
Before assuming employees are resisting change, it's worth taking a step back and asking whether they actually understand what's being asked of them. If they don't, communications has important work to do. If they do, it's probably time to start asking a different set of questions.
Tim Vaughan: What are the signals of a systems issue?
Ann Melinger: The clearest signal is when employees understand the change but still aren't able to act on it because the way work actually gets done hasn't changed.
In those situations, another message usually isn't the answer. Leadership needs to look at whether incentives, processes, accountability and leadership behavior are aligned with the priorities they're communicating.
Here I suggest asking a second diagnostic question: Do employees understand what's expected, but find it difficult to act because of the way work gets done today?
If the answer is yes, you've moved beyond a messaging issue. The difficulty may come from competing priorities, existing processes, incentive structures or concern about what actually gets rewarded.
Our data strongly supports that conclusion.
Sixty-eight percent of respondents agreed that structural systems matter more than messaging when shaping culture, and 66% agreed that sustainable culture change requires disrupting existing incentives.
That aligns with what employees experience every day. They aren't just listening to what leaders say. They're watching what leaders prioritize, what gets funded, who gets promoted and which behaviors are rewarded. Those signals tell employees what really matters, regardless of what's written in an email or presented at a town hall.
When those signals conflict with the organization's messaging, credibility starts to erode. Employees hear one thing but experience another.
That's the point where communicators have to stop asking, How do we explain this better? and start asking, What would have to change for employees to believe this is real?
Tim Vaughan: How can an internal communications leader tell senior leadership, “The messaging isn’t the problem,” without sounding defensive?
Ann Melinger: I think the most important thing is to start with the employee experience, not with the performance of the communications team.
The conversation shouldn’t be, We already communicated this, or Employees are resistant, or This is leadership’s problem. Even if there’s some truth in those statements, they immediately put people on the defensive. A much more useful approach is to separate three different outcomes: reach, understanding and adoption.
Did employees receive the information? Do they understand the change and what it means for them? And, finally, are they actually working or behaving differently as a result?
If the evidence shows that employees received the message and understood it, but adoption is still low, that gives communicators a much stronger basis for saying another barrier may be getting in the way. You’re not defending the communications function. You’re helping the organization diagnose what’s really happening.
And communicators have more evidence available to them than they sometimes realize. Channel and engagement data, employee questions, manager feedback, pulse surveys, listening data and even operational indicators can all help build a fuller picture. You might be able to say to leadership, for example, “The data suggests employees understand the priority. The barrier appears to be what our processes and incentives are reinforcing.” That’s a very different conversation from saying, “We already sent the email.”
The research gives internal communications leaders some external validation here as well:
In a question contributed by Poppulo, only 14% of respondents said they were extremely confident that major strategic priorities communicated by their organization actually become part of everyday behaviors and ways of working.
That’s a crucial insight because the gap between communicating a priority and embedding it in day-to-day behavior is exactly where communicators can add strategic value. Better channels and smarter campaigns can improve communication, but they can’t compensate for systems that reinforce something different. Our role is not just to make the message better. It’s also to recognize when the evidence is telling us the message is no longer the main issue.
Tim Vaughan: Your study found that 91% of respondents believe a disconnect between leadership messaging and leadership behavior is one of the most damaging cultural forces inside organizations. What does that finding tell us about leadership’s role during change?
Ann Melinger: It tells us a tremendous amount, because employees are constantly evaluating what leaders do against what leaders say.
The 91% finding is one of the strongest points of agreement in the study, and more than half of respondents chose the strongest possible level of agreement. We also found that 78% agree employees learn the real culture by watching what senior leaders tolerate.
So during change, employees aren't only paying attention to the town hall or the leadership message. They're watching what leaders prioritize, what they fund, what they stop doing, who gets promoted, what behavior they excuse and whether senior leaders hold themselves to the same expectations they're asking everyone else to follow.
That doesn't mean leaders need to model change perfectly. In fact, sometimes the opposite is more powerful. A leader who acknowledges uncertainty or admits a mistake can make change feel more credible because employees can see that the expectations are real and apply at the top as well.
We saw an interesting example of that in the Culture Activator segment, the respondents who reported the strongest cultural conditions:
Sixty-eight percent of Culture Activators said a senior leader had publicly admitted a mistake in the past year, compared with 28% of Blocked Advocates.
That may sound like a small behavior, but it sends a very clear signal about accountability and transparency. Employees are constantly looking for those signals, especially during periods of change.
Leaders can't communicate their way out of behavior employees can see for themselves. Every decision either reinforces the change or makes the message harder to believe. Ultimately, employees don't separate the message from the messenger. Leadership behavior is what shapes whether the message is believed in the first place.
Tim Vaughan: Where does technology fit into this work, and how can a platform like Poppulo help communicators make the case you're describing?
Ann Melinger: Technology's real value here is evidence. Most communication teams can tell you that a message went out and how many people opened it. Far fewer can show whether employees understood the message or whether it changed how they work, which is ultimately the part leadership cares about most.
It starts with reach. You have to be able to get information to employees wherever they work and tailor it appropriately so people receive something relevant to their role rather than one broad message designed for everyone. That matters even more when you consider how differently the same communication can be interpreted across an organization. Again, only 7% of respondents said leadership communications are always interpreted as intended.
A platform like Poppulo can help communicators understand whether they're reaching the right audiences and how those audiences are engaging. When you combine that data with employee feedback, you can start to build a better picture of whether a message was simply delivered or whether it was understood and acted on. An open rate alone can't tell you that.
That distinction becomes especially valuable when communicators are trying to diagnose whether they're dealing with a delivery problem or an adoption problem. If employees aren't receiving or engaging with the information, the channel strategy may need to change. That's something communications owns and can address. But if employees are receiving the information, understand what's expected and still aren't acting differently, then the evidence is pointing to another barrier.
Having that data changes the leadership conversation. Instead of saying, “We don't think the message is the issue,” an internal communications leader can show what employees received, how they engaged and what the feedback indicates. The conversation becomes less about opinion and more about evidence.
Of course, technology doesn't resolve the underlying tension by itself. It strengthens reach, relevance and measurement, and it can make a mismatch between what leaders say and what the organization rewards much easier to see. Technology can reveal the gap. Leadership has to close it.
Conclusion
Culture ultimately determines whether change takes hold. Clear communication is essential, but employees also need an environment that makes the expected behaviors possible, credible and worth sustaining.
The distinction is relatively simple, even if acting on it isn't. If employees don't understand what is changing or what it means for them, improve the communication. If they understand the change but can't act on it, or they see leaders, processes and incentives reinforcing the opposite, the organization needs to look beyond the message.
That distinction is supported throughout the Culture at Work Study. Sixty-eight percent of respondents agree structural systems matter more than messaging when shaping culture, while 66% agree sustainable culture change requires disrupting existing incentives. At the same time, 95% agree organizations navigate change better when leadership behavior, systems and messaging are aligned.
Technology can give communicators greater visibility into that equation. A platform like Poppulo can strengthen reach, targeting, consistency and measurement across internal channels, helping teams determine whether the issue is access and understanding or whether the data is pointing toward a larger organizational barrier.
Ultimately, the goal isn't simply better communication. It's greater alignment between leadership behavior, organizational systems and communication, so employees aren't being asked to reconcile competing signals. They hear one story from leadership, see it reinforced in how the organization operates and understand what it means for the way they work.
Download bink's full Culture at Work Study to explore the data behind these findings, learn more about the four culture mindsets identified in the research and assess how well leadership behavior, systems and messaging are aligned in your own organization.