A message is likely to get distorted when there is a lot of degrees of separation between the people who are communicating. In some cases the message needs to go up the chain, where a boss needs to ask his boss for permission, or it comes from a customer, who’s trying to explain her problem to a support person, who doesn’t know much about the problem domain, and is unwilling to talk to someone who does.

The boss will unconsciously change the story based on his values and will probably not tell it with as much enthusiasm as his subordinate did.

The customer who gets the same non-helpful, generic response over and over is stuck and will go elsewhere.

For the right things to happen, it is very important that the right people get connected.