Momentum Engineering

Voice Needs Practice

20 Oct 2025 • 1 min read

You tried to improve communication.

You added more meetings. You installed open-door policies. You encouraged "speak up culture."

It didn't work.

First, people need safety. Not permission to speak. Safety to speak without cost.

Until they have that, adding channels doesn't help. They'll stay quiet in more rooms.

Then, people need voice. Not just safety to speak, but practice speaking.

The muscle develops through use. Until they've built this muscle, they can't share what they know.

Even in safety.

Then, teams need information filtering. Not all voice is signal.

Until teams learn to distinguish insight from noise, more voice creates more overwhelm. Decision paralysis follows.

Only then can coordination emerge. Shared context. Shared understanding. Shared capacity to act together.

This is what you wanted from "better communication."

But you tried to jump straight here.

The cascade can't skip. Safety before voice. Voice before information quality. Information quality before coordination.

Skip a stage, and the whole sequence collapses.

You get meeting hell… everyone talks, no one decides. Or strategic silence… pressure to speak in unsafe places.

The sequence isn't bureaucracy.

It's physics.

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