You Don’t Control the Meaning of Your Message

15 January, 2026

Imagine getting a message from your boss at 10.30 p.m.: “Can we talk tomorrow morning?”

Seven words. Perfectly clear English. And yet communication may already have failed.

The boss may mean: I want your opinion on a new project. 

The employee may decode it as: I am about to be fired.

That gap between what a sender intends and what a receiver understands is where communication becomes interesting.

From Signals to Meaning

In 1948, Claude Shannon developed a mathematical theory of communication at Bell Labs. Warren Weaver later helped to make it mainstream.

The basic logic was simple: a sender transmits a message through a channel to a receiver, while noise may interfere. Human communication adds another complication: encoding and decoding.

We cannot transmit thoughts directly. We convert them into words, images, gestures or symbols. The receiver then interprets those symbols.

And that is where life becomes messier than telecommunications. Machines receive signals. Humans interpret them.

The Message Is Not the Meaning

Suppose a professor writes one word on an assignment. “Interesting.”

Praise? Sarcasm? Disappointment? Encouragement?

The word alone cannot tell us. Meaning comes from tone, context, previous experience and the relationship between sender and receiver.

So the real question in communication is not: “Did I say it clearly?” It is: “What is the other person likely to understand?”

A CEO announces: “We are restructuring the organisation to become more agile.”

Management may encode efficiency and competitiveness. Employees may decode layoffs are coming.

Same sentence. Different meaning.

Noise Everywhere

In Shannon's model, noise interferes with the signal. In human communication, noise is everywhere.

A bad connection is noise. But so are jargon, distrust, assumptions, cultural differences, past experience and information overload.

If employees distrust management, even an accurate message may be interpreted suspiciously. The credibility of the sender therefore becomes part of the message.

Corporate communication is never just about words.

Branding = Communication At Scale

Companies encode meaning through advertisements, products, packaging, stores, influencers, customer service and price.

Volvo has historically tried to encode safety. Rolex communicates status and achievement. Apple has long surrounded its products with ideas such as design, creativity and simplicity.

But here is the challenge. Companies transmit brand messages. Consumers construct brand meaning.

A company can call itself innovative all day. If customers encounter outdated products, clumsy apps and poor service, that experience becomes the real message.

Organisations Communicate Without Speaking

Companies can send powerful messages through their action.

A leader says, “We encourage experimentation.” Then employees who fail are punished.

The speech says: take risks. The system says: play safe.

Promotions communicate. Incentives communicate. Meeting behaviour communicates. Who gets heard communicates. Who gets ignored communicates. Even silence communicates.

An organisation's strongest messages are often encoded in behaviour rather than words.

And Then Social Media...

Traditional mass communication allowed companies to broadcast while audiences mostly listened. Social media changed the feedback loop.

Today the receiver immediately becomes a sender. A brand launches an advertisement. Consumers praise it, mock it, remix it, reinterpret it and circulate their own version.

The message no longer belongs entirely to the original sender.

And that leads to the most useful lesson in the entire communication model: Communication is not the successful delivery of information. It is the uncertain creation of shared meaning.

Whether we are talking to a colleague, leading an organisation or building a global brand, the crucial question is not: “What did we say?”

It is: “What did they hear?”