PwC CEO Learns the Importance of Transparent Communication

UpTrajectory Review

Paul Griggs, who spent nearly thirty years climbing from intern to US CEO at PwC, recently admitted that his instinct to streamline communication backfired. He arrived in the top job two years ago with a bias against over-communication, tired of bloated emails and determined to simplify. He slowed the pace of updates and trimmed the volume, assuming brevity served the firm. Instead, employees pushed back. They did not demand consensus on every decision, but they wanted to understand the reasoning behind the calls that affected their work. Griggs heard the critique, adjusted his approach, and now says he works deliberately to communicate more often and through varied styles and mediums.

For a small-business operator, this story lands close to home. Most owners make dozens of decisions weekly—pricing shifts, hiring freezes, tool changes, client firefighting—without explaining the why to anyone. When the team is five or fifteen people, silence feels efficient. Griggs discovered that even at a firm with tens of thousands of employees, unexplained decisions breed confusion and resentment. The parallel holds in a lean shop: if you switch scheduling software, drop a product line, or reassign duties without context, your staff fills the vacuum with speculation. A two-minute explanation of your reasoning often prevents a week of whispered doubts.

What stands out is not the admission itself but the mechanism. Griggs did not launch a glossy internal campaign or hire a communications chief. He listened to direct feedback, acknowledged the gap, and changed a personal habit. That is rarer than it sounds. Many senior leaders treat transparency as a branding exercise; Griggs treats it as an operating discipline. We agree with his core insight: people do not need to like every decision, but they need to understand it. Skepticism is warranted only on execution—sustained communication demands calendar discipline, not good intentions.

The second-order effect touches every layer of the firm. Partners who model closed-door decision-making teach their teams to do the same, creating silos that slow client work. Junior staff who hear reasoning learn how leaders weigh tradeoffs, which accelerates their own judgment. Clients feel the difference too: a team that can articulate why a recommendation changed is more credible than one that simply announces a pivot. The cost of Griggs's earlier minimalism was not rebellion; it was friction—slower alignment, duplicated questions, and a quiet tax on trust that never appeared on a spreadsheet.

Watch whether Griggs sustains the habit now that the interview spotlight fades. Quarterly earnings pressure and partner politics often push CEOs back toward selective disclosure. For readers running smaller teams, the actionable step is immediate: pick one recent decision you announced without context, revisit it this week, and walk your team through the reasoning in plain language. Do not wait for feedback to find the gap. Griggs needed thirty years and a CEO title to learn that lesson; you can apply it by Friday.

“If you don't communicate the nature of that decision and the outcome” — Business Insider

Takeaway: Explain the reasoning behind one recent decision to your team this week; clarity builds trust faster than consensus.