The Sound of Silence the quiet killer of momentum. It’s the silence between teams, the missing rhythm in the work, and the absence of the connective tissue that keeps a transformation alive.
When a program begins, it’s often with fanfare and energy. The business case is signed, the teams are mobilised, and the sense of urgency is palpable. But somewhere between design and delivery, noise turns to silence. Updates slow down, issues disappear into inboxes and decisions drift.
Before long, the transformation that once felt unstoppable begins to stall. Not because of capability or intent, but because communication has fractured and decisions are deeply buried in someones’ report that’s a month old.
1. The orchestration problem
Transformations are, by nature, sprawling ecosystems made up of hundreds of people. Internal teams, vendors, suppliers, and partners all working across multiple stages: design, build, delivery, and sustain. Frontline teams solving customer problems. Technology teams laying the foundations for the future. Corporate functions juggling priorities, budgets, and stakeholders.
When you list it all out, it becomes obvious: without a deliberate, structured rhythm, chaos takes over, or worse still, an unspoken and silent anarchy.
What holds a transformation together isn’t the Gantt chart or the delivery plan, it’s the drumbeat. The cadence of meetings, updates, decisions, and feedback loops that keep every team moving in time.
Too often, this is replaced by a patchwork of stand-ups and steering committees that don’t go nearly far enough. The truth is, you can’t “project manage” your way to alignment. You have to orchestrate it — deliberately, visually, and relentlessly.
2. The recovery truth: structure before speed
I’ve been brought in to recover some of the most complex programs in Australia and overseas, from an airline transformation, two of the largest banking remediations in history, to global outsourcing and defence projects. And I can say without hesitation: the very first thing I always do is re-establish rhythm.
Without it, no amount of skill or strategy matters. With it, even the most fragile program can come back to life.
When I led the turnaround of a major global outsourcing transformation involving over 2,500 people across multiple jurisdictions, we discovered that escalation management had completely collapsed. Issues were sitting unseen in personal inboxes. Some leaders were receiving 30 a day alone! No one had visibility of the common problems, or whether they were being solved at all.
The first step was brutally simple: we created a single escalation mailbox and made it mandatory. If an issue didn’t come through that channel, it wasn’t an escalation. We established a daily, non-negotiable 9 a.m. call with all key leaders to triage issues. At first, the discipline felt uncomfortable. Within weeks, it became liberating. People saw problems being solved in real time. Leaders stopped firefighting in isolation. The noise of confusion was replaced by a steady, confident rhythm of action.
That’s the power of structure. It doesn’t slow you down, it sets you free.
3. Giving everyone a voice
One of the most dangerous misconceptions in transformation is that communication is a one-way activity. Leaders talk, teams listen. But in reality, the most important form of communication in a program is upward.
If you want to kill silence, you have to give everyone a voice. Escalation isn’t about blame it’s about flow. Every issue that stays hidden costs time, money, and trust. The healthiest transformations are the ones where anyone, at any level, feels confident to raise their hand and say, “This isn’t working.”
If there’s one guarantee in every failing program I’ve recovered, it’s this: silence at the edges always precedes failure at the centre.
4. Decisions are the rhythm section
Communication alone isn’t enough. Decisions are what make the music. In most struggling programs, decisions pile up like debris. They sit in inboxes, on agendas, in draft papers, waiting for the “next monthly steering committee.”
But transformation doesn’t move monthly — it moves daily. The best-led programs have decision cadences that mirror the speed of change: daily for delivery issues, weekly for priorities, monthly for strategy.
When decisions flow, teams flow. When they don’t, the silence is deafening.
5. Orchestrating flow
Creating a program drumbeat is as much an art as it is a process. It’s about knowing who needs to talk, when, and why and creating systems that make that inevitable. Map your ecosystem: who leads, who influences, who delivers, and who receives the change. Each needs a rhythm tailored to their role.
Leaders must model it. Vendors must sync to it. Teams must trust it. When done right, communication and common goals stop things being just another meeting, and instead, become a movement. A living pulse through which the program breathes.
The Call to Leaders
If you’re leading transformation, ask yourself:
- Does your program have a true drumbeat or just meetings?
- Are your people talking, or are they waiting for permission?
- Do issues flow fast enough to be fixed before they fester?
- Can you see what’s happening across all of your teams at any given point in time?
- Does everyone know where to take a problem they need to be fixed in a way that is constructive?
Silence in a transformation isn’t calm, it’s quiet chaos. The louder the silence, the closer you are to failure.
Final Thought
The best programs don’t drown in noise, and they don’t operate in silence. They move to rhythm and can quickly step change when they need to. Leaders who create that rhythm don’t just manage progress; they amplify it. Because when everyone knows the beat, even the most complex transformation can find its flow.