Module 2 · Lesson 2.2b · Senior leaders
Too general, too specific, as a senior leader
Why the further a message travels, the less of its detail travels with it.
Key idea
Keep direction general. Find the few terms that offices read differently where the difference costs money, and make those specific, with an owner and a test.
In this lesson
- How one message became four
- Why a 40-page manual fails too
- How Harbourline fixed one term, “Delivery sign-off”
A message to four offices
Harbourline’s executive team, led by the Chief Executive, Niamh Kearney, meets in Cork. Its decisions have to travel to 250 people in Cork, Kraków, Pune and Hartford, most of whom will never hear the discussion behind them.
That makes the Continuum of Specificity a senior leader’s problem more than anyone’s. The further a message travels, the less of the detail behind it travels too.
Too general
After a difficult year with two unhappy clients, the executive team sends a message to every office: “This year, we will improve customer focus.”
Everyone agrees. Nothing changes. Sales in Hartford hears “win more deals”. The Kraków delivery centre hears “deliver faster”. The Pune Service Desk hears “be nicer on the phone”. Each office acts on its own reading, and the executive team wonders, six months later, why the clients are no more satisfied.
The words were right for the executive team, who shared the detail. They were too general for an organisation that didn’t.
Try it
“This year, we will improve customer focus”
Choose an office to see how the same message was heard there.
| What they heard | Win more deals. |
|---|---|
| Six months later | The clients are no more satisfied. |
The words were right for the executive team, who shared the detail. They were too general for an organisation that didn’t.
Too specific
The opposite response is just as familiar: a forty-page operating manual that specifies how every team must work with every client.
It takes months to write, is out of date on publication, and is read mainly by people looking for a reason they aren’t to blame. Detail that should belong to the teams doing the work is fixed from the centre, and the few points that genuinely needed agreement are lost among the many that didn’t.
The right level
Harbourline · Bids and Proposals and the delivery teams
The better move is to stay general on direction and get specific on the handful of terms the offices genuinely read differently, where the difference is costing money.
Harbourline found one of these in its bids. Proposals were promising clients service levels that the delivery teams had never agreed. In 2025, about one deal in four was sold that way, and the delivery teams found out only after the contract was signed.
The executive team didn’t write a manual. It made one term specific. “Delivery sign-off” now means that the delivery manager who will run the project has estimated the work and agreed the service levels the proposal promises. The test is simple: no proposal leaves Harbourline without the named delivery manager’s sign-off on it. Martin Hale, the Chief Delivery Officer, owns the definition.
A year later, about one deal in ten still slips through, and the trend is in the right direction. Everything else about how Bids and Proposals works with the delivery teams is left to them.
What this asks of senior leaders
- Keep direction general. Vision, priorities and values should be short enough to remember and repeat.
- Find the few terms that travel badly. Look for words that mean different things in different offices or functions, where the difference is causing real cost.
- Make those few terms specific, with an owner and a test, and let teams handle the rest.
- Expect to revisit them. A definition agreed for one market, system or service line may not hold when those change.
The question to ask before any message leaves the executive team is the same one a team leader asks at a shift handover: will the people receiving this know exactly what to do? If not, and it matters, get specific before you send it.
Pause and think · your notes
Think of a message from your leadership team that travelled badly across offices or functions.
How Alex would answer
Keep direction short and general. Spend the effort on the one or two terms that travel badly and cost money, as Harbourline did with “Delivery sign-off”.
What to take away
- Keep vision, priorities and values short enough to remember and repeat.
- Find the few terms that travel badly, where the difference costs money.
- Make those specific, with an owner and a test, and expect to revisit them when markets, systems or services change.
Your progress
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