Gary George: When Communication Breaks Down the Bigger a Business Gets

Gary George is a technology and operations director with over 36 years leading teams through two major scale-ups into the billions. He joins Natasha Plowman on Cutting Through to unpack why leadership that works at 60 people falls apart at 6,000.

They trace how top-down messages get lost in translation as companies grow. How the "Chinese whispers" effect and siloed departments who chase their own bonuses make employees feel like "a cell on a spreadsheet."

Gary shares the story of a managing director who put a number on a whiteboard to make an entire leadership team understand the true cost of a meeting, and why policies, from travel class to performance monitoring, shape whether people trust their leaders. They close on why fear is blocking AI adoption, and why leaders need to name it head-on rather than let the chatter around it grow.

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Cutting Through is produced by Kleiner Studios for Spinning Red.

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