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Opening Salvo
Let me tell you something I’ve noticed about managers in growing organizations. A leadership team announces a new initiative. The direction sounds clear in the meeting where it’s introduced, then managers leave the room and start sharing the update with their teams. Standard, right?
The first question their teams usually ask is simple: what does this actually change for us? That’s when it starts to get real. Managers begin translating the initiative into real work and explaining how it connects to existing priorities. They also adjust the message so their team can act on it.
Across the company the same initiative slowly starts sounding different depending on who explains it. Now before any of this gets misconstrued, nobody is doing anything wrong, but the organization has simply placed managers in the position of interpreting decisions they did not help shape.
Over time execution depends less on the decision itself and more on how each manager translates it.
Practical Personas (with a tinge of hyperbole)
The Message Carrier: They leave leadership meetings with direction that is already formed. Their role becomes explaining the decision clearly so the team can move. Most of their time goes into communication.
The Local Interpreter: They adapt the decision to match the realities of their team. Priorities shift slightly as they connect the initiative to the work already happening. Different teams start executing the same decision in slightly different ways.
The Decision Participant: They contribute to the design of major initiatives before they are announced. When the decision reaches their team, the reasoning behind it is already familiar. The conversation becomes shorter because the thinking happened earlier.
Ask Yourself
How often managers are explaining decisions they did not help shape
Whether managers can describe the reasoning behind initiatives or only the outcome
Where different teams interpret the same initiative differently
How far decisions travel before reaching the people responsible for execution
Whether managers are translating strategy more often than they help design it
Organizations quietly teach managers what their role is. Some systems train them to lead, but others train them to interpret.
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Why “Focus on Your Health” Can Become a Legal Problem
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit alleging that a Mississippi restaurant violated disability discrimination law when it fired an employee who had experienced a seizure.
According to the EEOC, Diamond Jim’s and Mrs. Donna’s Ole Farm Beef LLC terminated the employee so she could “focus more on [her] health.” The agency said the worker informed the employer after she began employment in October 2022 that she had a seizure condition that substantially limits major life activities. The lawsuit alleges the restaurant fired the employee in February after learning she had experienced a seizure in January. The employee had previously told the employer she had not had a seizure in years.
The EEOC is seeking backpay and other relief and requested a jury trial. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, employers may violate the law if they terminate workers because of an actual disability, a record of a disability, or because the employer regards the employee as having a disability. EEOC guidance describes this as the “regarded as” framework, which applies when an employee is treated differently because of a physical or mental impairment that is not transitory and minor. The EEOC has previously filed similar lawsuits involving employees terminated after employers learned about medical conditions. In those cases, employers told workers they were being dismissed so they could focus on their health.
Employers handling medical disclosures may want to review several practices:
Avoid assumption-based decisions: Employment actions should not rely on perceived health limitations.
Use the interactive process: Discuss potential accommodations with the employee before considering termination.
Document accommodation efforts: Maintain records of conversations and adjustments offered.
Prepare emergency response plans: Conditions such as seizure disorders may require safety procedures rather than removal from employment.
Also, employers, attempting to weaponize a disclosure is nasty work.
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Managerial Interpretation Layers
Managerial interpretation layers develop when organizations rely on managers to translate decisions rather than participate in shaping them. It’s almost always a slow-burn, but it happens more often than not.
Leadership teams make decisions together. Managers are introduced to the direction once it’s ready to be communicated. The intention is to move quickly and keep coordination tight.
Over time that structure increases the distance between the people designing decisions and the people responsible for executing them. Managers begin spending more time helping teams understand decisions than helping shape those decisions.
Conditions That Create Interpretation Layers
Decisions designed primarily within senior leadership groups
Managers introduced to initiatives after the direction is finalized
Limited visibility into the reasoning behind major decisions
Organizational growth that increases distance between leadership and teams
Organizational Costs
Managers spend significant time interpreting decisions instead of shaping them
Teams receive slightly different explanations of the same initiative
Employees experience decisions through interpretation rather than direct reasoning
Leadership believes direction is clear while managers continue translating meaning
Additional Diagnostic Signal
Listen for how often managers ask leadership to clarify the same initiative after it has already been announced. When the reasoning behind a decision travels slowly, interpretation becomes the manager’s primary responsibility.
Practices That Strengthen Managerial Participation
Involving managers earlier in the development of major initiatives
Sharing the reasoning behind decisions before they are announced
Creating structured feedback loops between managers and leadership
Ensuring managers understand the tradeoffs behind major initiatives
Execution improves when managers participate in shaping decisions rather than translating them afterward.
The Plug
This newsletter is brought to you by AstutEdge, a performance consultancy that helps organizations execute strategy by fixing misalignment in people, systems, and structure.
We work with leadership teams that want to turn strategic intent into measurable execution, by aligning operating rhythms, decision accountability, and leadership capacity with the metrics that matter most.
How We Help:
Expose Friction: Surface the hidden work, duplicate effort, and slow decision paths that quietly stall execution.
Realign Operating Rhythms: Redesign meeting and decision cadences so priorities move faster and accountability sticks.
Build Leadership Capacity: Strengthen how leaders make, communicate, and cascade decisions across teams.
Clarify Ownership: Define decision accountability to reduce noise, sharpen focus, and eliminate rework.
Engineer Performance Systems: Connect performance metrics to real outcomes, not paperwork.
Reinforce Organizational Health: Align people, systems, and structure so performance scales without burnout.
If your organization, or a partner organization, needs to move strategy from “planned” to “proven,” let’s talk.
Share this newsletter with leaders who feel the drag of misalignment, or visit astutedge.com to see how we help organizations execute faster, cleaner, and with greater impact!
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