The $1M mistake you don’t see coming...

"Your best people can only move fast when they’re moving in the same direction."— James McPartland

If you’re running a fast-moving business , you probably spend a lot of time thinking about innovation, growth, and staying ahead of the curve. But there’s something else quietly eroding performance and profits behind the scenes. It’s not a broken system or a poor strategy. It’s something far more common: poor communication.

Let’s talk numbers. According to the study by Grammarly Business and The Harris Poll, the average employee loses 7.47 hours each week due to miscommunication. For a midsized company of 80 people, this translates into more than $1 million in lost productivity annually - essentially paying for a full workday of silence.

Think of communication like the operating system of your business. When it runs smoothly, collaboration flows, projects move, and people know what’s expected.

But when it's buggy? Even the simplest tasks become frustrating and inefficient. In high-pressure environments, those bugs compound fast. Teams can lose more than 10 hours each week just trying to untangle misaligned expectations, vague messages, or unclear goals.

The impact ripples far beyond mere productivity metrics. When communication channels become muddled, innovation stagnates because great ideas get lost in the noise. Market opportunities slip away because information doesn't reach decision-makers in time. Team morale erodes as simple tasks become unnecessarily complex. The best employees—the ones who care the most—start feeling burned out from constantly cleaning up misfires.

And customers? They feel it too, often in the form of delays, mixed messages, or a lackluster experience.

Let’s break it down even further. Think about how many touchpoints a single project goes through—sales, operations, marketing, and client services. If just one link in that chain is unclear or inconsistent, the whole thing wobbles. In companies without strong communication systems, these handoffs become bottlenecks.

And here’s the kicker: it’s not just an internal issue. Poor communication is a competitive liability.

Companies that don’t address it face higher turnover, sluggish responses to market shifts, and a constant uphill battle to execute well. Over time, that leads to lost revenue, missed innovation, and weakened brand reputation.

But here’s the upside: unlike many business challenges, this one is fixable. It’s not about adding more meetings or micromanaging every message.

It’s about creating a culture where clarity is the norm. Where communication is treated as a skill and a system, not just a soft skill or afterthought.

The best-performing teams don’t just talk more. They communicate better. They create structure and shared language. They know how to surface tensions early, clarify expectations, and stay aligned across roles and departments. When those habits are built in, everything else becomes easier.

In today’s world, where speed and adaptability are everything, communication isn’t just nice to have, it’s essential. You can’t afford to let vague direction, unclear goals, or reactive messaging drain your team’s energy and your company’s profits. And you don’t have to.

Because here’s the truth: fixing communication isn’t just about reducing losses. It’s one of the most high-leverage moves a company can make to unlock growth, agility, and long-term success.

So if your team is moving fast but still feels stuck, start with the basics. Start with clarity.

Because the biggest breakthroughs don’t always come from adding more, they come from saying what matters, saying it well, and making sure everyone’s in the loop.

Mac 😎