Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 323
Bad news can arrive empty
The MUM Effect explains why undesirable information can arrive later, softer, shorter, or through another messenger even when the messenger did not cause the bad news
Premise
Organizations can possess accurate bad news and still fail to deliver it in a form that permits action. The MUM Effect identifies a recurring interpersonal pressure: people are more reluctant to transmit undesirable information to the person for whom it is undesirable than they are to transmit favorable news.
The executive risk is subtler than silence. Negative information may travel while its decision value is progressively edited out—through delay, euphemism, selective uncertainty, shortened consequences, or delegation to another messenger. A dashboard can therefore show that escalation occurred while the meaning that required escalation has already disappeared.
What the model is: MUM Effect in Knowledge →
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryEffects, Biases & Phenomena
- DomainVoice, Silence & Power
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Effects, Biases & Phenomena
Identifies a bounded pattern in judgment, behavior or communication and the conditions under which it appears. Naming the pattern makes a recurring difficulty recognizable; it does not make the pattern inevitable or supply a complete explanation.
- KnowledgeMUM Effect
- Related briefOrganizational Silence: Find the Information That Never Reaches You
- Key conceptDeception