Did the Communication Actually Work?

Last time, I wrote about feedback.

Feedback helps us compare what we expected with what actually happened, understand the difference, and decide what to change.

But I've been thinking about a question that comes before all of that: How do we know whether our communication actually worked?

We send the email. Deliver the presentation. Publish the guide. Conduct the training. Explain the procedure. Then we move on.

The information has been delivered. But has anything changed?

In my teaching, I can prepare a lesson, explain a concept, facilitate a discussion, and give students an assignment.

Those are activities I can observe and document. I can also count the outputs. How many lessons did I deliver? How many students attended? How many assignments were submitted? How many resources did I provide?

But none of those measures, by themselves, tells me whether students developed the capability I intended.

A student can attend a lesson about listening without becoming a better listener. They can describe cognitive empathy without demonstrating it in a conversation.

They can correctly define perception without recognizing when their own interpretation is influencing how they judge someone else.

Delivering knowledge and developing capability are not the same thing. There are not the same outcome.

That distinction matters beyond the classroom.

Imagine an organization introduces a new procedure.

Leadership sends an announcement. Managers attend a training session. Employees receive updated documentation. The organization reports: 95% of employees completed the training.

The announcement reached everyone. The new procedure is available online. Those numbers might be accurate.

But what was the intended outcome? Was it for employees to receive information? Or was it for employees to make different decisions and perform their work differently?

If the latter, the organization hasn't finished measuring. It needs to investigate what happened after the communication.

Did employees understand the procedure? Could they apply it? Were managers interpreting it consistently? Did the handoffs improve? Did the original problem become less frequent?

The training completion rate tells us something about delivery. It doesn't necessarily tell us whether the intervention worked.

This question has become increasingly important in my own work.

Consider Leverage Media.

I write and distribute emails about turning experience and knowledge into effective action.

I can measure: Emails published. Subscribers reached. Open rates. Clicks. Replies.

Those numbers help me understand aspects of distribution and engagement. But they don't fully answer the question: Is the knowledge I'm communicating becoming useful to someone?

A reader might open every email without changing anything. Another might read one email, reconsider a decision, and apply the idea six months later. The second reader may have experienced a more consequential outcome, even though the first appears more engaged in the available data.

That doesn't make open rates or clicks meaningless. It means I need to distinguish what each measure can actually tell me.

I'm beginning to think about communication outcomes at several levels.

1. Reach: Did the information arrive? Was the message delivered to the intended audience?

2. Understanding: Did people make sense of it? Can they explain what it means in their own situation?

3. Capability: Can they use it? Can they apply the knowledge to a problem, decision, or task?

4. Action: Did they do something differently? Did the communication influence behaviour, choices, or coordination?

5. Outcome: Did the change produce the intended result? Did the intervention actually improve the situation it was designed to address?

These levels are related, but they aren't interchangeable. And progress through one level doesn't guarantee progress through the next.

Someone might understand a recommendation but lack the resources or authority to act. Someone might act on a recommendation without producing the intended outcome.

That's why measurement needs to examine more than whether the message was received.

Some outcomes are relatively easy to observe.

Did someone complete a task? Did a customer purchase a product? Did a student submit an assignment?

Other outcomes take longer.

Did someone become more thoughtful in how they interpret others? Did a family become better prepared to navigate university? Did an employee develop judgment that will improve future decisions? Did an organization become less dependent on one person's knowledge?

Those changes may require repeated observations, conversations, performance evidence, and time. And even when improvement occurs, we have to be careful about claiming our communication caused it.

People learn and act within complicated environments. Our intervention may contribute to an outcome without being its only cause. Measurement should help us make better judgments, not manufacture certainty.

Think about something you recently communicated.

An instruction. A recommendation. A lesson. An announcement. A proposal.

Now ask:

You may discover that you've been measuring the work of communicating rather than the outcome you wanted communication to produce.

I've certainly had to reconsider that distinction in my own work. Because the purpose of Leverage isn't simply to produce more information.

It's to investigate how experience and knowledge become useful. And that requires following what happens after the message leaves us.

Communication isn't successful merely because something was said, sent, or published. Its success depends on what it was intended to accomplish and what actually happened.

Next time, I'll bring together the questions we've been exploring about priorities, ownership, coordination, resources, delegation, feedback, and measurement.

They lead to a final question: Someone Has to Own the Result.

— Greg Campbell
Leverage your experience.