Informing is not consulting, and the difference must be stated

Most internal communication failures are not about content. They are about a decision's status being left ambiguous.

Three things get sent through the same channel in the same tone. A decision that is final. A proposal genuinely open to change. A discussion where the outcome is undecided. When they are not labelled, people assume the most favourable reading, invest effort in responding, and discover afterwards that the decision was already made. That experience, repeated twice, teaches an entire workforce that consultation is theatre, and after that even genuine consultation gets no response.

Labelling costs a line. This is decided and takes effect from a stated date. This is a proposal and these specific elements can still change, with feedback closing on a stated day. This is exploratory and nothing has been decided. Once the label is habitual, people calibrate their effort correctly and stop reading hidden meaning into ordinary notices.

The harder half is honouring the label. If feedback is invited, the response must show what changed as a result, including the honest case where nothing changed and why. Consultation that vanishes without acknowledgement is worse than no consultation, because it consumed people's time and returned nothing. A short note saying we received these points, we adopted these, we did not adopt these for these reasons, preserves the channel for next time.