Read my lips
So, your employees seem confused about your strategy. It’s not as if you haven’t explained it. You’ve even blogged about it and there are posters. Some would put this lack of understanding down to poor communication. They’d claim you weren’t explaining it in a way that made sense to those required to deliver. Some would simply say communicate, communicate, communicate! Keep saying it and eventually it’ll land. Others might tell you to make it visual. Get a graphic artist to paint a big picture.
Any one of these could be true, but there’s an alternative reason that’s well worth considering. The answer might be in your corporate body language. To explain this let me take you through a real example:
A while back, I was working with a client on their strategy. This involved looking at their long term goals and short term objectives, and also into ways of working and team structure. They were very open and inclusive, so I had access to people at all levels from the senior leadership team through to the operational staff.
The first thing we did was look at their strategy. We wanted to understand what it really meant. Strategy is not always clearly articulated. Sometimes it’s not even well understood by those who created it. It’s important to address this first before going any deeper. Many are the times I’ve asked someone to show me their strategy, only to be presented with a wordy, but meaningless vision statement.
This was not the case in this situation. The senior leadership team had a very clear understanding of their strategy. They were able to articulate it unambiguously in the form of broad goals and specific objectives. They were unanimous in their understanding and also in their belief that their people had a similar understanding.
However, the teams were not so sure. They felt that the strategy hadn’t been communicated. When asked, they felt they had very little idea of what objectives they were trying to achieve. They knew what the to-do list looked like, but had no sense of this relating to a strategic intent. The overall sentiment was that the strategy had not been explained to them.
Look before you leap
I could have taken this at face value, simply playing back what they had said in a report. However, I see no value in that. The last thing I want to be doing is living up to the popular consultant stereotype. My aim is to add value. To provide some insight and guidance that wasn’t already known. If you read a previous post of mine entitled “touch it, live it, believe it“, you’ll also be aware that I like to test my assumptions. This situation was no exception.
So, instead of repeating what we heard, we conducted sessions with each of the groups to understand what they personally thought the objectives should be, and thus what the overarching strategy could look like. We gave them an opportunity to shape their own strategy.
This was a great move by the senior leadership team. It showed that they trusted their people to help shape their thinking and made the conversation a collaborative one. It was an opportunity for everyone to contribute to the strategic direction.
I ran sessions with the delivery teams, and something very interesting emerged. Every group independently created the same overall goals and objectives. They all had an internalised view of what the strategy should be, and those views were consistent across the organisation. More surprisingly, they were consistent with the picture that emerged from a similar session with the senior leadership team. Mentally, they were wonderfully aligned.
So why the disconnect? Why did they feel they didn’t understand, and yet could so clearly articulate it as their own strategy?
The next step made it clear. As a group, we then tried to align what they were actually doing with those objectives. We tried to identify how the current portfolio of work helped to achieve the strategic objectives. There was some alignment, but overall the connection between the two was very weak.
Actions speak louder than words
This is why the teams didn’t feel that they understood the strategy. They knew what they’d been told. They’d heard the communications and seen the posters. However, that didn’t match what the senior leadership team were actually asking them to do. When the rubber hit the road, the things that were prioritised were not the things that delivered the strategy.
Essentially, the issue lay with the senior leadership team. Although they had a strategy, and had successfully communicated it, their corporate body language said otherwise. All attempts to deliver against the strategy met with resistance, and all those things considered to be priorities didn’t align to it.
So, over time, the teams had come to the conclusion that the real strategy was different to that communicated. In a way they were right. The strategy of any organisation is written in the portfolio of work it is undertaking, not in a strategy document. Only if the two match can the document be considered to reflect the strategy.
So, as a senior leader your actions need to align to and communicate your strategy. Otherwise, it’s not your strategy, and all the words and pictures won’t change that.