Corporate Big Mouth

I was working inside a CIO organization once, on a project that wasn't public yet. We weren't even in the communications stage. And still, people would tell others who had no need to know exactly what we were working on.

We had to threaten NDAs constantly just to keep it contained.

One of my team members shared an office with a few of the people doing the talking. Someone finally asked the obvious question: where did you hear that? The answer came back plain: "I overheard it from the company Big Mouth."

If your reputation in a company is "the Big Mouth," that's not a good thing.

I've worked under NDA most of my career, given how sensitive customer projects usually are. I've had to remind people more than once: be careful what you say on a video call unless you're on headphones in a private space. What you overhear isn't yours to repeat, and it has nothing to do with your job. It wasn't my place to tell one customer what another customer was doing, and that same rule runs internally too. That discipline, more than anything technical, is what makes someone a trusted advisor instead of just another vendor.

Here's the question I keep coming back to when I think about this: are your words helping people do their jobs, or are you just adding noise and stress to their day? I've thought seriously about making corporate rumors the subject of a PhD dissertation someday. Get enough smart, motivated people in one building and the rumor mill becomes its own kind of nightmare, and its own kind of case study.