This article was first published on Woven Leadership on Substack.
A conversation with Rhonda Overby about tailoring stakeholder communication, led by Megan Lynch, Strategic Advisor, Independent Consultant, and Founding Editor of Woven Leadership on Substack.
Every program manager already knows that sponsors and steering committees decide whether a program lives or dies. Few treat the words used with those audiences as a decision in themselves. Rhonda Overby, founder of the communications firm Camera Ready, Inc.Ⓡ, has spent her career correcting that oversight. “What you say and how you say it determines outcomes,” she said. “Communication determines whether people move toward you or away from you.”
When Everyone Gets the Same Deck
The task of adapting communication to sponsors, committees, and delivery teams sounds obvious, so why is it skipped constantly? Usually, it is because program managers write from their own point of view rather than from the audience’s. “They think, what do I want to say?” Overby noted, “instead of what does this audience need to hear in order to understand?” A second habit compounds the first. Under pressure to sound capable, leaders reach for jargon and polish. “Audiences are already overwhelmed,” she stated, “so clarity is a relief.” Fear plays a role too. Leaders who worry about conflict or criticism default to language that is vague, safe, and forgettable.
The cost shows up quietly. A strategy nobody understands does not get challenged. Instead, it gets nods while you are presenting and is ignored afterward. Overby has watched boards approve a plan, roll it out, and then wonder why nothing changed. The reason is cultural as much as verbal. “If somebody is sidelined, because they ask a hard question, and those who are yes people are promoted, it undermines strategy,” she argued. Silence rarely implies agreement. “Sometimes a team has heard the message and they don’t say anything,” she remarked, “but that strategic plan doesn’t get implemented because they don’t buy into it.”
Stakeholders resist investing time in this work for their own reasons. Some confuse visibility with effectiveness. “The most likes does not necessarily mean the message was strategic,” Overby warned. Others simply distrust the label, having watched “strategic communication” become a phrase people use without understanding what sits underneath it.
Tailor the Frame, Not the Facts
Overby’s fix is not to soften the truth for each audience, but to change what gets emphasized. An investor and a customer can hear the same fact and need entirely different framing. “The words that you use would be affected by that,” she said. “We’re still talking about the same product or service, but different audiences would say something different and still be true.” That distinction matters for program managers juggling sponsors who want return on investment, committees that want risk exposure, and teams that want priorities. Tailoring is legitimate. Telling each group what it wants to hear is not. “I think honesty is always very important,” Overby emphasized.
The practical starting point is smaller than a communications plan. Before any major update, pause and answer four questions:
- Who exactly is this for?
- What matters to them right now?
- What should they understand?
- What should they do next?
“Many communication problems begin before anyone speaks,” she shared, “because the speaker has not clarified” those answers.
The Price of Being Understood
The business case runs straight through stakeholder confidence and risk. Programs stall when the people funding and defending them stop trusting the story. Tailored, honest communication protects that trust and shortens the distance between a decision being needed and a decision being made.
It takes time and energy to think through each audience rather than send one deck to everyone. It takes nerve to invite pushback in cultures that reward agreement. It can be uncomfortable. If a plan cannot survive a hard question, the problem was never the messaging.
To manage that risk, start narrow. Redesign one recurring communication, such as the monthly steering update, around a single audience’s real questions before expanding further. Treat silence as a signal requiring follow-up. Automation can draft and reformat, but it cannot substitute for ownership or presence, and audiences notice the difference. “Trust erodes quickly,” Overby said, “when audiences feel they’re being processed instead of understood.”
Her closing principle doubles as the discipline itself: “We have one mouth, two ears. It’s really not what you say. It is what is heard.”
Rhonda Overby is Founder and CEO of Camera Ready, Inc.®, where she advises leaders and organizations on strategic communication, reputation, trust, and stakeholder alignment. A former Emmy Award-winning network television journalist and current Independent Director for Harbor Bankshares Corporation, she writes and speaks about leadership communication, culture, governance, and execution. Find her on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Megan Lynch is a Strategic Advisor and Independent Consultant who guides leaders through pivotal moments with a focus on launching new programs that align strategy with execution. She is also a Senior Partner and Head of Project Intelligence at Freshriver.ai, where she helps organizations in regulated industries implement precision AI for mission-critical workflows.
As Founding Editor of Woven Leadership (https://wovenleadership.substack.com/), she publishes on how to go beyond tools and templates to explore the personal and organizational dynamics, and hard-won strategies that determine whether program and project leadership creates value. A former Senior Program Manager at Booz Allen Hamilton, she holds an MBA from George Mason University, and the PgMP and PMP certifications from PMI. Find her on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganktlynch/) and Substack (https://wovenleadership.substack.com/).
