So, your employees seem confused about your strategy. It\u2019s not as if you haven\u2019t explained it. You\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Any one of these could be true, but there’s an alternative reason that\u2019s well worth considering. The answer might be in your corporate body language. To explain this let me take you through a real example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s not even well understood by those who created it. It\u2019s important to address this first before going any deeper. Many are the times I\u2019ve asked someone to show me their strategy, only to be presented with a wordy, but meaningless vision statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n