Own the Story — No Packet Loss
The leader is the custodian of the message — deliver it to the front line yourself, never via cascade.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
A communication discipline for large organizations: the leader must personally own and tell the company's story rather than delegating it down a chain. Each management layer adds well-intentioned 'flavor,' so a story cascaded through 5-7 layers arrives distorted — 'packet loss.' Owning it directly also forces the leader to simplify the business to a story they themselves understand.
Origin
Advice given to Jeetu Patel by Cisco board member Wes Bush when Patel took the CPO role; reinforced by Matt McInnis (CPO at Rippling) on maintaining intensity across layers.
Core principles
- 01Storytelling is not a marketing exercise done after the product — the story is why you build the product.
- 02Never delegate the storytelling; always be the custodian of the message.
- 03Every intermediary layer adds flavor, so cascaded messages degrade (packet loss).
- 04Intensity of an idea drops at each layer; your job is to maintain it, not buffer it.
- 05If you can't convey the story yourself, you can't expect sellers or customers to.
- 06Clarity of thought produces clarity of communication.
How to run it
- 1
Sweat the details until thinking is clear
Spend time with your team getting crystal-clear on what you want to do and, crucially, why — clarity of thought is the source of clarity of communication.
Pro tip The context of 'why' is the most-lost element; constantly remind people why it matters.
Watch out Fuzzy thinking guarantees a fuzzy message that degrades further at every layer.
- 2
Deliver the story to the front line yourself
Tell the story directly to the people doing the work so they hear it from you with no intermediary distortion.
Pro tip Patel will stand on stage for 90 minutes to tell the story directly — a 'direct Ethernet cat 5 connection' with no packet loss.
Watch out Assuming teams will faithfully cascade it down 5-7 layers guarantees the end audience won't recognize the message.
- 3
Minimize asymmetry top-to-bottom
Give the maximum context you're permitted to, keeping the least possible gap between the topmost and bottommost layers of the org.
Pro tip Treat people like adults and provide as much context as regulations allow (Patel notes quiet-period limits as a section 16 officer).
Watch out Large companies get good at the math of the business but lose the soul; lossy upward messages also leave leaders out of touch with the front line.
- 4
Anchor the story in product evidence
Make the story exist first, then build products that provide the proof and evidence for it.
Pro tip Owning the story forced Patel to radically simplify a sprawling multi-industry business into something conveyable.
Watch out Treating the story as a post-build marketing wrapper inverts the causality and produces a weak, unbelieved narrative.
In the wild
Board member Wes Bush pulled Patel aside and told him never to treat the company's story as a marketing exercise, to be its custodian, and never delegate it down a telephone-game chain of 5-7 layers.
→ The hidden benefit: it massively simplified Cisco's broad business into a story Patel could convey, which sellers and customers could then digest.
Common mistakes
Delegating the story down the org chart
Each of 5-7 layers adds well-intentioned flavor, so the front line and customers receive a distorted message they can't act on — packet loss in the storytelling.
Treating the story as post-build marketing
The story is the reason you build the product; producing it afterward as a marketing wrapper strips it of conviction and leaves it unbelieved internally and externally.
Is it for you?
Best for
Senior leaders at large, multi-product organizations trying to keep thousands of employees and customers aligned on one narrative.
Not ideal for
Tiny teams with no communication layers, where direct context already flows and formal storytelling discipline would be overhead.
From the transcript
“don't think about your story of the company as a marketing exercise. Think about it as the most intrinsic foundational exercise of the company and…”
“Every one of them will add a flavor with well-intentioned and then by the time it gets to the end, people won't know what it…”
“the intensity of of an idea or a plan drops at every level that it goes from CO to the next layer and layer and…”
“the clarity of thought is what brings clarity of communication.”
From the episode
AI is critical for humanity’s survival: Cisco president on the AI revolution
Jeetu Patel