Governance without service design becomes friction

One thing I keep noticing in organisations: a surprising amount of internal communication is optimised for the sender, not for the people receiving it. Messages like “Important notice”, “Technical update” or “For your information” immediately trigger the same mental parsing process: Does this affect me? Do I need to do something? Is this urgent? Why am I even getting this message?

The real problem often isn’t the information itself. It’s the interpretation work. And that interpretation work scales badly — not just in terms of time, but in terms of cognitive load, uncertainty and organisational friction. That’s why I increasingly believe: clarity is part of compliance.

Good governance is not just about rules and approvals. Too often, communication is optimised to tick the box of “we informed people” instead of actually helping people understand what matters to them. But “we informed people” is not the same as “people understand what matters to them.”

Because the moment people constantly have to interpret expectations themselves, governance turns into friction.

To me, User and Digital Experience was never primarily about screens or making interfaces pretty. It is about reducing interpretation costs and making organisations easier to operate in and with — and thus creating better conditions for collaboration, efficiency and ultimately new business opportunities.

Originally posted on LinkedIn.