The Information Flow

Why Account Management succeeds or fails at information flow, not relationship warmth.

The Three-Second Silence

On March 27, 1977, fog rolled across Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife.

Two Boeing 747s sat on the same runway. KLM Flight 4805 at one end, engines running. Pan Am Flight 1736 still taxiing toward an exit they couldn't see in the murk.

At 5:06 PM, the KLM first officer radioed the tower: "We're now at takeoff."

It was meant as a statement. We are beginning our takeoff roll.

The tower heard something else. A request. And responded: "Okay... stand by for takeoff, I will call you."

At that exact moment, Pan Am's copilot keyed his radio: "We're still taxiing down the runway!"

Both transmissions hit the airwaves simultaneously.

The result was a three-second heterodyne. A shrill electronic squeal that blocked out everything except the first word.

The KLM captain heard: "Okay..."

He didn't hear: "...stand by for takeoff."

He didn't hear: "...still taxiing down the runway."

He released the brakes.

Twelve seconds later, the KLM 747 was hurtling through the fog at 160 mph. The Pan Am crew saw landing lights bursting through the white. Captain Victor Grubbs slammed the throttles forward, trying to turn off the runway.

He almost made it.

583 people died. The deadliest accident in aviation history.

Everyone Had the Information

Here's what makes Tenerife unbearable:

Every person in that sequence had the information someone else needed.

• The tower knew Pan Am was still on the runway
• Pan Am knew they hadn't exited
• KLM's flight engineer even asked: "Is he not clear, that Pan American?"

The captain said: "Oh yes."

He was wrong. But he wasn't lying. He genuinely believed it.

The information existed. It just didn't flow.

Three seconds of overlapping radio transmissions. Three seconds of electronic noise where there should have been human voices. Three seconds that separated "stand by" from "okay."

The handoff failed in the air itself.

This Is Information Flow

The Tenerife disaster wasn't caused by incompetent pilots. KLM's captain, Jacob van Zanten, was one of the most experienced in the world. He was literally the face of KLM's safety training program.

It wasn't caused by bad intentions. Every person in that sequence was trying to do their job.

It was caused by information that existed but didn't survive the handoff.

This is the thesis of Information Flow: Success happens in the handoffs, not the heroics.

When the right information reaches the right person at the right time, things work.

When it doesn't, even the most capable people make catastrophic decisions. Not because they're careless. Because they're operating on incomplete data.

What This Means for You

If you manage client relationships, you sit at the center of multiple handoffs.

Sales hands you a client. You hand context to execution teams. Teams hand deliverables back to you. You hand updates to leadership. Clients hand you information that has to reach people who've never met them.

Each handoff is a potential Tenerife.

Not in stakes. In structure.

Information exists on one side. It needs to reach the other. Something in between can garble it, delay it, or block it entirely.

The fire drill you're managing right now? Trace it back. At some point, someone had information that someone else needed. The handoff failed.

The Asymmetry of Problems

Here's what makes information flow so critical:

Failures upstream cause failures downstream.

When Sales doesn't tell you why the client really hired you, your discovery goes in circles. When your discovery doesn't capture the real success criteria, execution teams optimize for the wrong metrics. When teams deliver something the client didn't ask for, you spend hours in damage control.

Fix upstream. Downstream improves.

But here's the trap: fixing upstream is invisible.

Nobody celebrates the meeting you didn't have to schedule because the handoff was complete. Nobody notices the fire drill that never happened because you asked the right question in discovery.

Prevention is invisible. Firefighting is heroic.

This creates a dangerous incentive: you appear valuable when putting out fires. But the best AMs prevent fires by nailing the information flow from day one.

Gates: Where Fidelity Is Checked

After Tenerife, aviation created explicit checkpoints for communication. Standard phraseology. Readback requirements. Mandatory acknowledgments before proceeding.

Gates.

A gate is a point where information fidelity is verified before work proceeds.

In account management, information flows through a cycle:

Strategy → Execution → Data → Results → Insights → Action → Strategy...

Every arrow is a handoff. Every handoff can lose fidelity.

We use six gates to check the handoffs:

The cycle repeats. Every project, every quarter, every pivot triggers the loop again.

"I'll get that information later" is not passing the gate.

At Tenerife, "I'll confirm he's clear" would have taken three seconds. The captain didn't take them. He assumed.

Assumptions kill fidelity.

Gates Are Fractal

Here's what most people miss: the gates don't end after one cycle.

They repeat at every scale.

Every new project restarts the loop. Every strategic pivot triggers Gate 0 again. Every new stakeholder resets the fidelity chain.

The cycle operates at every scale simultaneously.

You never "finish" information flow.

You're always somewhere in the loop, at some scale.

The question is whether you're passing the gates or running past them hoping to catch up later.

At Tenerife, the captain ran past the gate. "Is he not clear, that Pan American?" was the gate check. The answer was "Oh yes." It was wrong. And they were already moving.

The Story Anchor: Your Client in Every Room

At Tenerife, Pan Am's position was known to people the KLM crew couldn't hear.

The tower knew. Pan Am's copilot knew. The information was in the system.

It just wasn't in the KLM cockpit.

This is the problem you solve with a Story Anchor.

Think about what happens without one:

You have a discovery call with the client. You understand why they hired you, what success looks like, what's out of scope. That conversation lives in your head.

Then the SEO team asks: "What should we optimize for?"

You answer. But you're translating from memory. Context gets lost.

Then the content team asks: "What tone should we use?"

You answer again. More context lost.

Then the PPC team asks: "What's our target CPA?"

Each team gets a fragment. No one gets the whole picture.

The client's actual question gets diluted across every handoff.

Just like Pan Am's position got diluted across the radio.

What the Story Anchor Does

The Story Anchor is a document that travels with the work.

It captures:

• SITUATION: Where the client is now
• COMPLICATION: What's blocking them
• QUESTION: The real strategic question they need answered
• ANSWER: Your hypothesis and approach

Plus success metrics, channel roles, and scope boundaries.

Every team gets the same document. When the PPC team asks about target CPA, they can see why that number matters to the client's actual business goal.

The Story Anchor is how client intent survives the handoffs.

It's the voice in the room that says: "We're still on the runway."

The Test

Here's how you know if your Story Anchor is working:

Give it to someone on the execution team who wasn't in discovery. Ask them:

1. "What problem is the client trying to solve?"
2. "How will we know if we've succeeded?"
3. "What should you NOT work on?"

If they can answer all three correctly, your Story Anchor is working.

If they can't, your client's voice isn't reaching the people doing the work.

You have a Tenerife in your system.

Trust Unlocks Disclosure

There's another layer to information flow: what clients tell you.

At Tenerife, one contributing factor was the flight engineer's hesitation. He asked if Pan Am was clear. The captain said yes. The engineer didn't push back.

The hierarchy suppressed the question.

Clients do the same thing.

They withhold information. Not maliciously. They withhold because they don't yet trust that you'll use it well.

The Trust Equation explains why:

          Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy
Trust  =  ─────────────────────────────────────
                    Self-Orientation

When you're demonstrating expertise instead of listening... when you're steering toward predetermined solutions... when you're finishing their sentences...

Clients feel it. And they close up.

Low self-orientation builds trust. When you ask genuine questions, listen more than talk, and let them retain control of their own strategy... they share what's really happening.

Trust unlocks disclosure. Disclosure enables accurate work.

Without disclosure, you're flying blind. Just like KLM.

Proactive Stance

One more principle.

When something goes wrong, the instinct is to fix it quietly. Don't alarm the client. Handle it internally. Tell them when it's resolved.

This is exactly backwards.

When a client discovers a problem first, trust is destroyed.

When you communicate the problem first, trust is built.

The asymmetry:

• Client discovers problem first → "What else don't I know?"
• You communicate problem first → "They're on top of it."

At Tenerife, Pan Am's copilot transmitted "We're still on the runway!" but KLM didn't hear it.

In your work, you have a choice the Pan Am crew didn't: you can make sure your message gets through. You can pick up the phone. You can say the uncomfortable thing before someone else discovers it.

Proactive beats reactive. Every time.

The Standard

Information Flow succeeds or fails in the handoffs.

Not in the relationship warmth. Not in the responsiveness. Not in the deliverable quality.

Those matter. But they depend on information that's complete, accurate, and timely.

583 people died at Tenerife because three seconds of radio silence replaced three words: "He's not clear."

Your stakes are lower. But the mechanism is identical.

Information exists somewhere. Someone needs it. The handoff either works or it doesn't.

Build the gates. Verify the criteria. Carry your client's voice into every room.

That's information flow.

"The information existed. It just didn't flow. Three seconds of electronic noise where there should have been human voices."

Go Deeper

Each element of Information Flow has its own mechanics:

• The Gate System — Structured checkpoints that prevent fidelity loss
• Story Anchor — How to carry client intent through every handoff
• Trust Unlocks Disclosure — Why clients withhold and how to create safety
• Proactive Stance — Why telling first builds more trust than hiding
• The Upstream Principle — Fix early, prevent late

See all Information Flow posts →