Why ‘need-to-know’ communication fails modern IT teams

Buzzwords like strategic, outcome-driven and experiment have become second nature in modern organizations. Terms meant to imply sophistication, momentum and signpost modern leadership are now diluted jargon.

In my experience, when everything is important and strategic, nothing is urgent and little gets done. And when language lacks clarity, expectations become ambiguous, next steps become uncertain and teams don’t feel empowered to make decisions.

On the surface, this may seem like a semantics problem — something that can be solved with a dictionary and thesaurus. But I would argue that what gets treated as a communication problem is often indicative of a deeper leadership issue. Understanding where, how and why communication breakdowns occur can help leaders not only address them but also create greater buy-in across teams and drive action toward goals.

The same difference

It should come as no surprise that communication breakdowns can manifest quite literally through our word choices.

As I mentioned before, some words or phrases have become so overused that they’ve lost any true meaning or specificity, but the impact of diction goes beyond buzzwords and jargon.

For example, in IT, the distinction between security and safety is critical. A system can be safe — meaning stable, reliable and unlikely to fail — without being secure. And being secure does not mean unharmful.

While this is straightforward in English, it’s not the same in other languages. In Swedish, Latvian and Portuguese, for instance, the same word is used for both concepts. So, a non-native English speaker may communicate “secure” when they really mean “safe,” creating ample space for misunderstandings and mistakes.

This isn’t a linguistic anomaly, especially with teams collaborating across countries and continents. It is a reminder that we routinely assume shared definitions and that what we say or type will be understood the way we intended, despite evidence to the contrary.

The ‘need-to-know’ fallacy

While it may seem rudimentary to point out the impact of the words we choose, it’s foundational for recognizing how our assumptions impact communication efforts — especially as there are deeper issues at play rooted in behavioral psychology.

Many business leaders default to communicating at a “need-to-know” level, only sharing select information under the guise that too much context or detail can become noise, distracting teams from performance and success.

With even just a small understanding of how humans assess information and make decisions, you will know this is a faulty approach. Daniel Kahneman’s Nobel Prize–winning work on decision-making showed that humans make far more decisions than they realize – and most of them happen on autopilot.

Think about those times when you got to work or the store, but don’t remember the drive at all. That’s because your brain was functioning automatically based on previous experiences and habits. Our brains work to recognize patterns, fill in gaps and make many decisions without conscious thought.

So, the idea that our manager or boss knows what information we need to make the best decisions is fundamentally flawed. You don’t know which signals another person will recognize, which patterns they’ll rely on or which tradeoffs they’ll consider in their decision-making process. And that diversity of thought is what truly allows teams to come together and thrive.

“Need-to-know” thinking is a relic of simpler systems and slower change. Modern IT environments — especially those infused with AI – are too complex, interconnected and fast-moving for that approach to work. By withholding broader context through a “need-to-know” lens, you’re not simplifying their decision — you’re constraining it. More information doesn’t paralyze people, but poorly framed information does.

Clarity vs completeness

Interestingly, the rise of large language models (LLMs) has exposed this fallacy in painfully obvious ways. LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are trained on averages, like the most common interpretations and the most statistically likely meanings. Without context, they produce generic outputs. But with context, constraints, definitions and examples, they become exponentially more useful.

What we’re learning about prompt engineering is that clarity is not about brevity. Instead, it’s about completeness.

When we work with AI, we’ve learned to be explicit:

• In this role, do this
• Absolutely do not do that
• Here’s an example of what “good” looks like

We provide guardrails, history and intent. Yet, in human communication, we routinely do the opposite. We compress strategy into slogans, replace context with keywords and trust that everyone will “get it.” Not everyone will.

It’s also important to note that clarity isn’t just about what is said; it’s also about who says it.

The usefulness of any message can be thought of in terms of the ‘CRUFT’ function Scott Ambler created to describe the value of documents. The usefulness of a message is the function multiplying the five probabilities that it will be Correct, Read, Understood, Followed and Trusted.

Sometimes, a message needs to come from the authority of the organization, like a CEO setting direction or a CIO defining priorities. Other times, credibility comes from proximity: a manager explaining how strategy affects compensation, performance or day-to-day work. The key here is to recognize that we don’t always trust the message, but it helps when we trust the messenger.

The cost of ambiguity

Communication drives action, and vague or unclear communication can lead to indecision and frustration. Nowhere is this more damaging than in IT transformation initiatives.

Our own research at Emergn showed a 24% year-over-year increase from 2024 to 2025 in workers who don’t feel properly informed about the goals, objectives and expectations for change initiatives. Without these insights, workers struggle to understand the bigger picture and their place in it.

In The illusion of control: Why IT leaders cannot rely on clear roles and responsibilities, I wrote about how humans crave certainty, yet change is inherently uncertain. The more that business leaders can provide broader context and clarity around their ambitions and not just “need-to-know” snippets of the bigger picture, the greater buy-in and enthusiasm they will secure from their workforce.

Ultimately, enhanced communication may also be the difference between retaining your top talent and receiving a letter of resignation.

Precision is not micromanagement. Context is not noise. And clarity is not a nice-to-have.

It’s how trust is built, decisions are improved and modern IT teams move in the direction leaders say they want to go.

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