Try this tonight. Turn off the lights, close the curtains, and wait until the room is as dark as it gets. Then keep your eyes open and look into the darkness. You might expect to see black — complete absence, the visual equivalent of silence. But that is not what happens.
Instead, a faint grey appears. No shapes, no contours, just a dim and uniform field hovering in front of your eyes. In German there is a word for this phenomenon: Eigengrau, literally »intrinsic grey.« It describes the subtle brightness we perceive even when no light reaches the eye.
Vision science explains why. Even in complete darkness the retina does not fall silent. Photoreceptors continue to fire occasionally, neurons remain active, and the brain interprets this background activity as a minimal level of brightness. What we perceive, in other words, is not the world but the baseline activity of our own perceptual system.
We never see pure darkness. We see Eigengrau.
Noise: perception always starts with a baseline
One of the central insights of perceptual psychology is that perception never begins at zero. Even when the external signal disappears, the system continues to produce activity. Psychologists describe this dynamic through Signal Detection Theory, which frames perception as a constant negotiation between signal and background noise.
When signals are strong, the noise fades into the background. When signals weaken, the noise becomes visible. Organizations work in a surprisingly similar way. They also carry a kind of background noise — not neural activity, but shared expectations, past experiences, informal stories, and fragments of organizational memory.
Most of the time this background remains invisible because clear signals anchor interpretation. But when signals weaken — when communication becomes vague, delayed, or inconsistent — the background begins to shape how events are understood.
A postponed town hall meeting, a vague reference to »strategic adjustments,« or an unusual silence from senior management rarely remains neutral information. Instead, people begin to interpret what is happening by drawing on the patterns already present in the organization, a phenomena called sensemaking. Information fades. Interpretation begins. The organization does not see nothing. It sees meaning generated from its own internal patterns — its own Eigengrau.
Contrast: meaning rarely exists in absolute terms
Another finding from vision science deepens this picture: we rarely perceive brightness in absolute terms. What we perceive is contrast. The night sky often appears darker than Eigengrau, even though it is not. The stars create contrast, and contrast sharpens perception. Already in the nineteenth century, researchers such as Ewald Hering observed that the human eye experiences true black only in contrast to white. Without contrast, perception drifts toward grey.
Something similar happens in organizations. Employees rarely interpret events in isolation; they interpret them against what happened before. A leadership message feels unusually transparent if previous leaders communicated little. A small structural change can feel dramatic if the last transformation was chaotic. And a vague announcement about »strategic change« may trigger anxiety if earlier restructurings ended badly. The signal itself may be identical. What changes is the context in which people perceive it.
Meaning in organizations, much like perception in vision, is rarely absolute. It emerges through contrast.
Interpretation: every mind fills the gaps
There is one more detail about Eigengrau. Even in complete darkness, the grey we perceive is not identical for everyone. Its exact shade depends on the individual visual system — its sensitivity, its internal noise, and its state of adaptation. The darkness may be shared. The grey is not.
Organizations show the same pattern. When information becomes scarce, interpretation does not happen only collectively. It also happens privately, inside individual minds. Each person fills the gaps using their own experiences, expectations, and emotional history with the organization. Two colleagues may hear the same vague announcement about »strategic change.« One becomes curious, another quietly concerned, while a third barely reacts at all. The informational darkness is shared. The Eigengrau is not.
This creates two layers of interpretation. There is an organizational Eigengrau, shaped by shared narratives and cultural memory. And there is an individual Eigengrau, formed by personal experiences and expectations.
When signals weaken, both layers activate simultaneously. People discuss what might be happening — but they also interpret events privately, long before any conversation takes place. Meaning forms in both places.
When the lights grow dim
Return for a moment to the dark room. Even in complete darkness, the visual system never stops working. Signals continue to flicker through the retina, and the brain transforms this activity into the faint grey we perceive as Eigengrau.
Organizations behave in a similar way. When information fades, interpretation does not stop. People continue to make sense of what is happening around them by drawing on past experiences, shared narratives, and personal expectations.
Silence, in other words, rarely creates neutrality. It activates the background patterns through which the organization understands itself. For leaders this insight carries a practical implication. Communication gaps do not leave empty space. They invite interpretation — and those interpretations will be shaped by everything the organization has learned to expect.
Leadership cannot eliminate uncertainty entirely. But it can influence the signals that anchor interpretation. Because when the lights grow dim, people will still see something. They will see Eigengrau. And the shade of that grey will depend on the stories, experiences, and expectations the organization has accumulated over time.