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Strategy Ambassadors: The Key to Eliminating Strategy Execution Failure

Employee engagement and strategy execution failure – two stubborn challenges that countless organizations face but may not see as being connected. Big mistake.

Here’s something I’ve learned - there IS a connection and employee engagement and commitment is the secret sauce behind successful strategy execution. Let’s review the evidence.

 

I probably don’t need tell you that employee engagement levels continue to run at all-time lows. Recent statistics from the Canada Human Resources Centre reveal something shocking – 60% of employees are not engaged with another 15% classified as actively disengaged! The impact of employee disengagement is a bottom line issue. For example, statistics show that unhappy workers cost the North American business economy well over $350 billion annually in lost productivity! However, the impact goes deeper.

 

A review of the recent literature on strategy execution sub-optimization and failure rates shows that it persists in the range of 75% to 95%! This means that the vast majority of organizations are having trouble putting their business strategy into action, producing sub-optimized financial results, stakeholder outcomes, and impact.  

Many people tell me that they just can’t believe that strategy execution failure hasn’t improved over the past 25+ years. That the implementation of professional strategy management disciplines and tools such as Management by Objectives, the Balanced Scorecard, and, more recently, OKR’s, hasn’t made a significant dent in these results is unbelievable to many.

 

Why is this the case? Why hasn’t the proliferation of strategy management approaches turned the strategy execution failure statistics around? Based on my reading, experience, and observations, here’s what I think -

 

From the post-war era until the present time we have experienced a general upswing in both the introduction and use of recognized business/strategy management disciplines and tools in a range of organizations. However, over the same period, employee engagement levels have generally been tracking downward. While there may have been a non-linear progression, I believe that there has been an overall downward trend for some time. At some point in history these trend lines crossed (probably in the past 25 years) and the strategy execution failure rate hasn’t budged since then.

Of course, one wild card in all this has been the change in the nature of the marketplace – it has gone from local to global. While we can’t discount the pressures this has put on business success rates, I’m not convinced that we can blame strategy execution failure rates on globalization.

 

What I do believe is that strategy execution success requires BOTH the implementation of sound strategy management discipline and tools AND high levels of employee engagement. And I suspect that employee engagement levels are actually the more important element of the two.

 

So what if there was a simple solution that any organization could implement that would have an impact on both elements of this equation AND produce significant improvements in that organization’s strategy execution success rate?

 

That solution is Strategy Ambassadors.

 

Strategy Ambassadors are people from within your organization who understand your business strategy and are passionate about engaging their peers with it. This includes helping everyone: understand your strategy and see their role in putting it into action; become committed to taking an active and enthusiastic role in implementing your strategy in their department/team; and partner with leadership to improve the strategy and the results it achieves.

Strategy Ambassadors can be people from any level of your organization – managers and non-managers alike. They just need the training and empowerment necessary to communicate and discuss your organization’s strategy story with others and help your people make your strategy their own at the “local” level.

 

Leveraging Strategy Ambassadors within an organization helps strengthen the elements you need for strategy execution success in the following ways:

Strategy Ambassadors enable the implementation of strategy management discipline across your organization: A lack of employee understanding of your strategy is the first barrier to strategy execution success - Strategy Ambassadors assist with clearing away this impediment by communicating your strategy across your organization and helping employees understand it in a way that has personal meaning to them. Lack of organizational alignment is another barrier to successful strategy execution. Strategy Ambassadors help employees align their day to day work efforts with your strategic priorities. They do this by engaging employees in an active process of discussion, discovery, and commitment to aligned action. The final driver of strategy execution success is making strategy everyone’s job. By engaging employees in an ongoing two-way dialogue about strategy implementation, results, and improvement, Strategy Ambassadors help employees interact with your strategy in a high value way as part of their everyday contribution. Leveraging Strategy Ambassadors is an efficient and effective way for your organization to put elements that are critical for strategy execution success in place.

 

Strategy Ambassadors have a positive impact on employee engagement levels: A critical precursor for high levels of employee engagement is employee trust. A clear and believable organizational strategy paired with the strong, transparent, and consistent two-way communication of that strategy goes a long way to building high levels of trust with employees. This lays the groundwork for employee engagement, however, implementing the infrastructure required to enable employee interaction with, and collaboration on, your strategy is a necessary ingredient in making employee engagement a reality. Strategy Ambassadors play a critical role in building employee trust levels on the ground and they are a pivotal part of the infrastructure that enables all employees to have a role and voice in your strategy.

 

While Strategy Ambassadors can have a critical impact on improving the chances of strategy execution success for your organization, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the importance of leadership in this equation. In fact, visionary and collaborative leadership is an important critical success factor. Strong and committed leadership (1) creates a culture and environment that’s conducive for employee engagement and strategy execution success, and (2) empowers Strategy Ambassadors to take ownership for their role of inspiring employees to: internalize your organization’s strategy, invest in putting it into action, and make the achievement of desired results a personal mission that they can actually influence.

 

I have seen many organizations make Strategy Ambassadors a key part of their strategy execution success plan. The most successful organizations make this role the lynchpin of their success. In my experience, it’s the high levels of employee engagement this role enables that makes the difference and delivers the greatest impact.

Is your organization ready to experience the benefits achieved through Strategy Ambassadors? Start planning to introduce them today to see your employee engagement and strategy execution results soar!

 

Frustrated with your organization’s level of strategy execution success and want to explore implementing Strategy Ambassadors? Let’s talk about how you can do it including your next steps. Contact me through the comments section below or at [email protected]    

Are You a Collaborative Leader?

 

Adopting a collaborative approach to strategy means giving people at all levels of your organization a seat at the table through all phases of the strategy process – strategy creation, strategy implementation/execution, and strategy management. It’s a proven approach for achieving exceptional performance results and organizational outcomes in today’s new business environment.

In addition to taking a great deal of courage, practicing collaborative strategy requires a new leadership style. One that’s built solidly on the idea that people and organizations can’t thrive within a culture of command and control.

This new style of leadership: has a bias towards informed and empowered employee decision-making; sees employee “co-leadership” as the most powerful route to organizational success; and actively creates an environment that enables employee ownership. People who build their leadership style on this model are collaborative leaders.

Are you a collaborative leader? Take a closer look at the six associated leadership attributes and actions outlined here and use the questions under each one to see whether you are successfully practicing collaborative leadership.

 

1 Realize That Your Role is to Set Boundaries (NOT to control what happens within those boundaries)

Are there certain things you and your people won’t do/shouldn’t consider doing to achieve results? Is anything simply off the table/beyond your team’s responsibilities? It’s part of your role as a leader to make these “boundaries” clear to the members of your team. However, once those boundaries are set, your role as a collaborative leader is to engage your employees in defining what happens inside the boundaries. Many leaders get nervous about this idea but if you’ve done a solid job of setting and communicating the boundary lines there’s no need to feel this way.  I can almost guarantee that, when you adjust your role in this way, your employees will bring maximum creativity to the table and come up ideas and plans you would never have thought of yourself!   

That being said, playing the right role here doesn’t mean that you sit on the sidelines and simply watch how the action unfolds! You have wisdom to share and ideas about how things should be done – part of being a collaborative leader involves sharing your thoughts with employees/your team. The key, however, is realizing that others have valid ideas and approaches too - and that there’s more than one way to get things done/achieve desired results.

Questions for you to consider: Do you set/re-set and communicate clear boundaries regarding “what’s in” and “what’s out” for employees/your team? Do you take the time to confirm that employees know where/what the boundaries (including behaviors, activities, responsibilities, and authorities) are?

 

2 Bring People Together to Define the Way Forward in

Beyond giving employees a seat at the leadership table, collaborative leaders make employees partners in defining the vision, choices, and action plan for their organization on an ongoing basis. The benefits of this approach include higher quality options and strategies, greater employee buy in for new directions and the required actions (after all, they helped create them themselves), greater organizational agility in the face of rapid change, and, ultimately, better business performance results. 

Questions for you to consider: Once you have established clear boundaries, do you let employees have a say in (and maybe even take the lead in) determining the strategy and plan for achieving organizational success? Is this a one-time event or part of a regular, ongoing process?

 

3 Respect, Welcome, and Leverage Diversity

Collaborative leaders realize that different points of view are the greatest point of strength their organization has. While it can take time and effort to work through different opinions and perspectives, the benefit of this investment is the creation of better, more innovative ideas that have passed the implementation stress test. When putting this attribute into action a collaborative leader ensures that all voices are welcome and heard during business discussions and deliberations.

Questions for you to consider: Does your organization/team include people with a range of experiences and backgrounds? Does everyone have an equal opportunity to put their thoughts and ideas forward and do they receive equal consideration by the team at the leadership table?   

 

4 Create an Environment That Welcomes Participation, Innovation, and New Opportunities

Giving your employees a seat at the leadership table won’t make a real difference unless the atmosphere feels right – they just won’t contribute. Collaborative leaders work to create an environment where employees will be bold enough to make the most of this opportunity. They encourage participation by employees/team members, engage them through intriguing questions, listen to their answers, and involve everyone in lively and positive discussions and dialogue. A collaborative leader enables and rewards new ideas, seizing new opportunities, appropriate risk taking, and intelligent failure by everyone in the organization. When conditions feel safe like this, employees engage at the leadership table and collaborate enthusiastically.

Questions for you to consider: Do all employees/team members contribute to and participate in business discussions? Are they contributing ideas willingly and/or do they take the initiative without waiting to be told what to do (by you and/or other leaders in your organization)?

 

5 Help Others See and Leverage Connections and Integration Points

Thinking and working in silos seems to be a natural hazard in today’s fast paced business world – even with all the great collaboration tools and technologies available today. As a leader, you are often in the best position to see (1) everything that’s going on, and (2) where the opportunities for synergies and integration are. A value-added contribution every collaborative leader makes is to shine a light on these opportunities for employees/team members, share what they see, facilitate the exploration of these opportunities by employees across the organization, and enable employees themselves to create strategies for leveraging the opportunities and integration points they see value in.

Questions for you to consider: Do you take the time to look at the big picture to identify silo-busting connections and/or synergies that could help enable greater organizational success? Do you orchestrate time for employees/your team to work together to explore, develop, and implement responses to these opportunities?   

 

6 Empower Team Members to Take Ownership

Are your management efforts focused on establishing, managing, and rewarding your employees for taking accountability for getting things done? The problem with this kind of thinking is that it’s more of the command and control management style. Collaborative leaders push beyond accountability to achieve the natural result of giving employees a seat at the leadership table – ownership. Enabling employee ownership (for where the business is going, how it works and the results it’s achieving) requires giving team members the knowledge and freedom they need to engage in problem solving activities and make decisions collaboratively and independently. When implemented within clearly defined authorities and boundaries frameworks, employee ownership accelerates the ease and speed at which your organization achieves its goals and desired performance results.

Questions for you to consider: Do your employees make business decisions independently and with the confidence that they fit with the strategic choices of the organization? Do most of your employees’ day to day business decisions move the organization’s strategy forward? How do you know? 

 

This is what collaborative leadership looks like in action! 

 

Are you a collaborative leader? Your responses to the various questions posed here will help you see where you are today and where your opportunities for improvement are. As you continue to develop your collaborative leadership skills just remember: Collaborative leaders act as catalysts, rather than barriers, for employee and organizational success.

If you lead people with this vision of leadership in mind you’ll be well on your way to practicing collaborative leadership successfully and effectively.

 

What is Collaborative Strategy?

 

If you'd like to explore the collaborative strategy approach in more detail, go to http://www.collaborativestrategy.ca/download-now/ and download my new ebook "Business Results Revolution for Healthcare Organizations" now.

 

The Balanced Scorecard ≠ A Report Card

 

I’ll admit it. Back in 1997, when my employer decided to start using the Balanced Scorecard, we used it as a report card.

 

What did that look like?

 

Well, we rolled up indicator results to get a strategic objective performance score. And then strategic objective performance scores were rolled up using a weighting formula to get an overall Balanced Scorecard performance score. We watched that overall score like hawks, looking for improvement from month to month and, if I recall correctly, our executive team even had a goal that was focused on the achievement of a target (improved) Balanced Scorecard score on their performance plans.  

Talk about a horribly wrong approach to using the Balanced Scorecard. But, to be fair, my colleagues and I weren’t alone. Lots of other companies adopting the Balanced Scorecard back in those days were doing a similar thing. Heck – the name “scorecard” was right in the tool’s name so who could blame any of us!

Either way, the outcome of our focus on Balanced Scorecard scoring was that we rarely looked deeply at indicator results to explore what was really going on. No time! What we were consumed with was the challenge of improving performance results scores so that we would get a better overall Balanced Scorecard score.

 

I know – it sounds a little crazy today. And, you might even be thinking “What’s so bad with focusing on improving performance results? Maybe the reason was a bit off but looking at performance sounds about right”.

And while I would agree that focusing on improving performance and results is great, what was really going wrong back in the day was that we were focused on trying to improve our performance results to improve our Balanced Scorecard SCORE – not to improve the way our organization worked (or didn’t work!) to produce better customer, and by extension, financial outcomes.

 

It’s a subtle but critically important difference.

 

Thankfully, the Balanced Scorecard scoring concept has gone the way of the dodo. While we may still calculate indicator performance results scores (e.g. actual performance is X% of target), we use this information to figure out the right color-code or icon to signify relative performance levels. And while we still might weight indicators to determine the performance results for a strategic objective, the purpose again relates to performance color-code assignment. No one calculates/should be calculating an overall Balanced Scorecard score any more.

 

However, just because we don’t do the behavior today it doesn’t mean that the scorecard as report card mentality has also disappeared (maybe it’s the name – unfortunately the word “scorecard” is still there…….).

In fact, I think that many Balanced Scorecard users still see the Balanced Scorecard as a report card. How do I know? Because I see the telltale signs all the time:

- Concern about setting performance targets

- Complaining about the methodology and thresholds used for red-yellow-green color-code assignments

- Freaking out about “red” performance results (and doing anything to change them)

- Fear of taking on the role of indicator or strategic objective owner

- Superficial performance results commentary

- Anxiety about Balanced Scorecard meetings

When you see signs like these you just know that, for your people, your Balanced Scorecard = a report card. The problem is that, for most of us, report cards, thanks to unfortunate school experiences, are loaded with personal judgment - who wants to subject themselves to that?

 

The good news is that, over time, the approach to the Balanced Scorecard has evolved so that, in smart organizations, the Balanced Scorecard ≠ a Report Card.

 

Now,  the Balanced Scorecard = a Learning and Engagement Tool.

 

You see, we’ve discovered that the better, more productive approach to the Balanced Scorecard is to make it part of a strategy-focused improvement loop that is focused on collaborative, non-judgmental organizational learning that explores: (1) whether you are doing the right things (i.e. Is our strategy moving us forward and is it creating value for our customers/stakeholders?) and whether you are doing those right things right (i.e. Is our organization executing its strategy to the best of its ability?), (2) when the answer is no, what needs to change and how, and (3) whether the changes we have made have produced the results we wanted (and, if not, why not).

 

I’m sure glad that the days where we purposely used our Balanced Scorecard as a report card are over.

Why? Because, by growing up and into the Balanced Scorecard, we’ve been able to realize a power in the Balanced Scorecard that I don’t think many of us envisioned back in those early years!  

  

“Hi! How am I doing?”

Ed Koch, the three-time former Mayor of New York City who died recently, was known for walking around the streets of his city and engaging citizens with this unique and unexpected question.

When I heard this little fact I was absolutely astounded by the brilliance of Ed’s question. While others might see it as quirky and self-serving, this pointed question offered a disarming invitation to citizens to provide direct feedback on the performance of the NYC municipal government in general, and the Mayor more specifically, in meeting their needs.

There’s no doubt in my mind that when Ed asked this opening question he often got an earful. However, once he had a citizen talking, I suspect that Ed took the opportunity to probe and gather detailed information about the current and future needs and expectations of each individual he spoke to. I also suspect that the information Ed gathered through his conversations made their way back to City Hall (1) for a response when critical issues were raised, (2) to provide insights on the pulse of the citizenry, and, most importantly, (3) to detect (and respond to) shifting trends in citizen needs and expectations as early as possible.

Now, the skeptical among us might be thinking that Ed was just being a savvy politician when he went out asking this question. And, I guess you are probably right. But, before we dismiss Ed’s motivation and therefore the question as just another political tactic, let’s stop and consider what organizations can learn, and leverage, from Ed’s brilliant question.

 

Regardless of which sector your organization is in, you are in the business of serving and satisfying the needs and expectations of your stakeholders and/or customers. To do this successfully you first need to know what these needs and expectations are. This is the platform most organizations use to set and refresh their strategic plans. However, more than understanding all stakeholder/customer needs and expectations, you need to know how your stakeholders/customers rank order their needs and expectations. You see, while stakeholders/customers want and need many things, some of these things are more important to them than others. And since your organization doesn’t have infinite capacity, knowing what’s most important to your stakeholders/customers is key to picking your spots carefully so that you deliver the most value possible to them. Unfortunately, organizations often don’t do this step very well.

However, more troublesome is the fact that many organizations don’t evaluate their performance on delivering products and services, and whether that performance meets stakeholder and customer needs and expectations, on an ongoing basis. And they don’t continue to monitor the “pulse” of their stakeholders and customers, and more specifically their needs and expectations, between planning events (often going three years between stakeholder/customer touch points and conversations).

The problem here is that your stakeholders’ and customers’ needs and expectations can change over time – both the needs and expectations that make their list AND the relative importance of those needs and expectations. If you aren’t checking in with your stakeholders and customers regularly, you run the risk of falling out of touch with them, failing to consistently fulfill their needs and expectations (and sub-optimizing the value you provide in their eyes), and loosing ground to your competitors or alternate providers who are more in synch with what your stakeholders and customers need and expect.

 

The best solution is to plan a stakeholder/customer conversation strategy that features and leverages Ed Koch’s simple little question.

 

What if you regularly engaged your stakeholders and customers with this opening line: “Hi! How are we doing?” What you’d find is that your customers and stakeholders would tell you exactly how you were doing at meeting their needs and expectations. It’s only natural that many would tell you how your organization is disappointing them and what you need to do better. However, some would also tell you what you are doing right.

 

Go ahead – try it out on the next stakeholder or customer you encounter.

 

Whatever responses you get to the question when you ask it, it’s important to realize that what your customers and stakeholders tell you is a veritable gold mine. Besides giving you an opportunity to hear about (and solve) critical problems that are particularly irritating to your stakeholders and customers, what they choose to talk to you about is equally important. You see, something doesn’t irritate you unless it matters to you and we usually only remark on things and experiences that meet and/or exceed our most important needs and expectations. It’s exactly the same for your customers and stakeholders. So look at what your stakeholders and customers are talking about every time they answer the question. Leverage these clues and be sure to probe until you are confident that you really understand what what they are saying is telling you about their underlying needs and expectations.

As you gather more information from more customers and stakeholders, be sure to compare what they are saying, and what you’ve learned about the underlying needs and expectations, to past information and knowledge. Ask yourself: “Has anything changed (i.e. new needs and expectations, a change in the prioritization of their needs and expectations, etc.)?” When you take this step, you are well on your way to starting a meaningful ongoing conversation with your customers and stakeholders that has the POTENTIAL to deliver significant value for both of you.

 

But notice that I said potential there.

 

While asking your customers and stakeholders the question: “Hi! How are we doing?” is a positive step forward, asking the question alone isn’t going to get you very far. You have to do something with the intelligence and insight you get from the responses you receive and the conversations you have. In fact, unless you and your organization are committed to going all the way, and taking action on what you’ve learned, you may as well not start down the customer and stakeholder engagement/conversation path at all.

 

Why? Because you can actually damage your relationship with your stakeholders and customers if they take the time to open up to you and then you don’t respond in some tangible, high-value way. While you may choose not to take immediate action on every customer and stakeholder request or complaint you hear, you do owe them a response to their input. That response can range from a promise of quick corrective action, to putting them in touch with someone who is in a better position to help, to acknowledging their feedback and explaining how you will use it to deliver even greater value to them in the near future.

 

Every organization would do well to follow Ed Koch’s lead and leverage the question “Hi! How are we doing?” as part of an ongoing customer and stakeholder engagement plan. However, it’s important to realize that you shouldn’t go out and engage your customers and stakeholders in these important two way conversations unless you and your customer/stakeholder are both going to benefit in truly meaningful ways.

 

What do those benefits look like?

For your organization: The ability to solve critical customer and stakeholder problems before they get out of hand, repair relationships and build trust, and gain greater customer and stakeholder insight that translates into the delivery of ongoing relevant customer/stakeholder value

For your customers and stakeholders: A personally meaningful response to the insights provided in the form of resolved issues, a feeling of being understood and valued, and the receipt of greater levels of value via their relationship with your organization

 

All this from Ed Koch’s brilliant little question. Thanks Ed!

 

So – How am I doing?

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Keeping the Strategy Conversation Going - Business Performance and Strategy Execution Results Review Meetings

Initial strategy conversations take place in your organization when you share and explore your company’s strategy story with your employees. It is important to keep the strategy conversations going within your organization - the review of business performance results, and the assessment of strategic impact, provides you with the perfect opportunity to do just that.

Business performance measurement data, or your balanced scorecard, provide you with a wealth of information in this regard, however, data alone doesn’t tell you the complete story you need to properly answer the important question “Is our company executing our strategy as planned and is it having the impact we expect?”

 

You really need another layer of information to fully answer this question and this additional content comes from your people.

 

While this added intelligence is initially provided by the root cause analysis and commentary information that accompanies the business performance results presented in your balanced scorecard, this is just a starting point. Richer insights; innovative ideas and go forward action plan options; and decisions about changes in strategic direction can only come from the conversations your business performance results stimulate. Cross-functional discussion and exchange amongst your employees that is focused on the success and impact of your strategy execution investments, and the relevance of your strategy in a changing business environment, is where the ultimate value is for your organization. This is precisely why strategy-focused organizational conversation shouldn’t be an option for your company. The fact is that organizational conversations are essential if you wish to achieve your goals for profitable business growth in the most effective and efficient way.

While strategy conversations can, and should, take place across your organization anywhere, anytime, between anyone in your company, you need to create formal venues where you can orchestrate these discussions.

 

One such opportunity is in regular business performance/balanced scorecard results review meetings. The primary objective of this meeting is to review the “health” of the strategic objectives on your strategy map. This objective enables a discussion of whether your company is executing your customer and business strategy as planned and whether your strategy is truly moving your company forward. Four questions are usually asked and answered in business performance/balanced scorecard meetings:

(1) How are our BSC indicators and strategic initiatives performing versus targets?;

(2) What are our results telling us about the health of our strategic objectives/our customer and business strategy?;

(3) What is our root cause analysis telling us about our critical business issues?; and

(4) What corrective actions are planned, what resources do they require, what impact to we hope they will have by when, and what business risks, or unforeseen business/operational impacts, are associated with our planned actions?

And while there are other questions that you could consider during these meetings, these are the ones you absolutely must cover during your conversations.

 

Not surprisingly, the way you run these meetings is as important as what gets covered. Your goal is to get a healthy, fulsome, no topic off the table type of discussion going that features a healthy exchange of insights and perspectives on what’s going on in your business. In my experience, the best business performance/balanced scorecard meetings happen when they are run as “open meetings” where anyone in the organization can attend and employees with ownership for strategic objective health and business performance results take a hands-on role in leading the conversations.

Running open meetings signals that everyone in your company has a role to play in the successful execution of your customer and business strategy. Open meetings give you an invaluable forum for information exchange, knowledge sharing, and integrated business solution and idea generation. Plus, open meetings help everyone in your organization make time for business strategy as part of their regular job/work activities but only if you actually give employees a way to get to these meetings. This is particularly challenging but important in the case of frontline workers but it just takes creative solutions to get past these hurdles. One example is taking meetings and discussions about business performance results and strategy execution right to the shop floor. Always think: what creative solutions can we employ to make our business performance/balanced scorecard meetings accessible to everyone in your company?     

 

Another important formal venue for organizational conversation occurs during strategy execution progress reviews. Usually held on a quarterly basis, the objective of these meetings is to assess how your strategy is doing and whether anything needs to change. Five important questions should be asked and answered through these reviews:

(1) How have our strategic objectives been performing over the past quarter and what are the implications for strategy execution? (Are we moving forward?);

(2) What are our key strategic issues and what must we do to deal with them?;

(3) Have we got our business model right (is it driving the results we expect it to) or do we need to make changes?;

(4) What, if anything, is changing with our customers, with our competitors, and/or in our market and external operating environment and what impact could/should it have on our customer and business strategy?; and

(5) Is our customer and business strategy having the impact we expect/want or does something need to change?

 

Again, the how of this meeting matters as much as the what. The goal of all strategy execution progress review meetings is to explore the five questions through spirited conversation, discussion, and the honest and open exchange of perceptions, fact-based insights, and ideas. Needless to say, these meetings require the involvement of senior leadership team members, however, you can achieve an even higher quality meeting by driving for openness. For example, why not include the next layer of business leaders as attendees? What about subject matter experts? Business partners? External experts? Your customers? Feeling uneasy with these suggestions? Well, if it makes you feel better, don’t invite everyone to all parts of the meeting.  Just be sure to push the openness barrier where it makes sense.

 

Always remember - having more people in on the strategy conversation on an ongoing basis always produces better results for your company.

Why? Quite simply because organizational conversation is the “grease” that always makes the strategy execution feedback loop turn faster, accelerating your strategy execution success and enabling a more efficient and sustainable cycle of constant improvement in the customer and financial outcomes achieved by your company.  

 

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book Business Results Revolution: 3 Critical Questions and the Conversations That Transform Business Performance Every Day   Like what you’ve read? Please let me know. To add your name to the pre-order list for my book, just make your request via the comments section below or email me at [email protected].

 

Why Your Employees Don’t Care About Your Business Strategy

A problem I hear frequently from business leaders is that they can’t get their employees interested in, or engaged with, their company’s business strategy. They say that their employees don’t seem to care. When I ask them why they feel this way, they cite lack of interest in participating in strategy information sessions and results sharing town halls, poor uptake of business update newsletters, and failure to look at balanced scorecard results reports as just some of the examples of low levels of employee engagement and interest in the strategy of the company. 

Unfortunately, many business leaders take this apparent lack of employee engagement as a sign that their employees aren’t really committed to the company or that they don’t care about the company and what it takes to be successful. Sadly, this attitude about employees is common in many companies today - many executives have come to the conclusion that employees just don’t want to get engaged.

Armed with the assumption that low employee engagement is an employee attitude problem, the usual solution is to push more, and harder, from the top in the quest to “fix” employees/the employee problem. Not surprisingly, the actual result achieved by these actions is exactly the opposite of the desired outcome. That is, it causes erosion in real employee engagement levels and reduced employee loyalty to the company.

 

Have you ever considered that employees don’t engage with a company’s strategy because they aren’t given the opportunity to engage in, and with, the strategy in a meaningful way in the first place?

And that many employees only APPEAR not to care while they actually really do and management just isn’t giving them a fair chance to show it?

 

Most of the employees I have met in my career have truly wished to contribute to the success of their organization and, when asked, have been more than happy to participate in a dedicated way in their company’s strategy creation, execution, and management processes. In my experience, the barrier to making this a reality isn’t usually employees at all. In fact, the problem is often a systemic one with the organization, and business leaders themselves, putting significant obstacles in the way of employee engagement with the business strategy.

What are these systemic barriers? Let’s look at the four top reasons why companies have trouble getting their employees truly excited about, and involved with, business strategy.     

 

 

Employees Don’t Know What the Business Strategy Is

You’ve heard this one before – only 5% of the workforce in the majority of organizations understands their company’s business strategy. This means that only a fraction of the employees in any given company understand what the business strategy is, what it really means, what it looks like in action, and why (and how) executing the strategy will drive business success - all despite the fact that many organizations hold splashy strategy launch events for their employees and produce beautiful materials that communicate their business strategy.

Despite these efforts, there’s still a disconnect. The primary disconnect for most employees is in the “what it really means” and “what it looks like in action” parts of the equation outlined above. The problem is that most strategies and strategic plans I’ve seen are written at a very high level. They include strategic direction statements like “Focus on Quality Operations” or “Excel at Innovation” and that’s it. While it sounds good and people nod their heads when they hear them, when employees go back to their front line work, you realize that what it means to “focus on quality operations” means different things to different people.

The problem is that a statement like “focus on quality operations” actually doesn’t tell you anything about what the company really means or hopes to achieve through a focus on a specific strategic direction and this leads to a lack of clarity about what it looks like in action. And while many strategic plans include lists of initiatives that support various strategic directions, these lists are actually not very effective in helping most employees see what “focusing on quality operations” looks like in action in their job. This leads us to the next barrier….     

 

 

Employees Can’t See Themselves in the Strategy

If the only way your employees can see the strategy “in action” is through the initiatives that align with each strategic direction, they will only be able to “see themselves in the strategy” if their work includes completing one of the identified strategic initiatives.

In reality, the work of most employees involves completing business processes, not working on strategic initiatives. Actually, most of the work that will contribute to the successful execution of a company’s strategy occurs through business processes. If a company hasn’t mapped its business processes with its business strategy, it is missing an opportunity to demonstrate how to put the strategy into action, and how employees fit in and contribute.

An employee’s work is important to them and they see doing their work as their way of contributing to company success. If employees don’t see how their day to day work (via the business processes they work on/in) fits in with, and contributes to, the business strategy, they can’t see themselves in the strategy. When employees can’t see themselves in the business strategy, the strategy just doesn’t register with them and, as a result, they don’t feel like the strategy has a direct relationship to their work.

Employees see their work as important and when the business strategy doesn’t connect with the real work they do, employees conclude that the business strategy doesn’t relate to/doesn’t concern them.           

 

 

Employees are Incented to Focus on Operations ONLY

Many business leaders and managers believe that employees should focus on their work alone - that is, they don’t need to understand the business and that the work of other departments is just a distraction. In fact, many organizations go so far as to use employee goal and incentive compensation plans to focus employees on operational performance exclusively. In the worst case scenario, this focus on operational results is misaligned with strategic goals and results, negatively impacting the achievement of strategic objectives.

Companies that focus their employees on operational matters only are placing significant limitations on the ability of their organization to achieve business success. For example, when employees don’t understand how the business works, as well as the strategic goals of the organization, they are at greater risk of making operational decisions that have a detrimental impact of the overall success of the company. In contrast, when employees understand the strategic priorities of the entire business and how all parts of the business need to work together to achieve success, they realize that operational decisions made in one part of the company have an impact in other business units and departments and they make these decisions accordingly.

Helping employees understand the relationship between operations and the strategic objectives of the organization allows employees to make more informed day to day business decisions and that always translates into better strategic performance overall. 

 

 

No One Asks Employees Their Opinion or Gives Them the Chance to Participate in the Strategy Creation and Management Process

Why is strategy making and improvement so often considered to be the sole domain of executives and business leaders? Why does the strategic planning and execution process tend to rely on numbers and data almost to the exclusion of the insights and wisdom of the people who are close to the action and the customer (i.e. the employees)?

The unfortunate fact is that the traditional approach to strategic planning and strategy management used by so many companies almost always unfolds in exactly this way with limited involvement by, and input from, a broad range of employees

Many organizations don’t even bother to engage their employees in the strategy making process while others make the offer and then complain that their employees don’t take them up on it. Unfortunately, in many of these cases, organizations don’t take the necessary steps to help their employees participate in strategy making and management activities. Not releasing employees from front line work and not making time for participation in strategic discussions part of every employee’s job are just two examples of the real barriers that prevent employee engagement with a company’s business strategy.

Not tapping into the knowledge and wisdom of a company’s employees during the strategy creation process is short sighted and can be expensive. For example, most customer facing employees can tell executives exactly what the company’s customers need and expect and how the company is doing at fulfilling them. Want to know more about the competition and the trends in the industry? A crack sales force can tell business leaders everything they need to know. With this much inhouse knowledge at hand, why spend the time and money on customer focus groups and analysis by consultants? However, many companies insist of doing just this.

In addition, employees have unlimited ideas about how to actually execute and improve a company’s business strategy. Unfortunately, most companies don’t tap into this critical resource.

Given the potential associated with employee involvement, and the lack of it in most organizations, is it any wonder that employees chaff at executing a strategy that they didn’t have a part in defining and which may not make sense or be easy to implement given the business realities at the front line of the business?

 

 

In my experience, most employees want to engage with their company by getting involved in strategy creation and execution – they really do care about the work of their company and they want it to be successful. The problem is there are just too many obstacles getting in the way.

How can business leaders increase employee engagement with their company’s business strategy?

(1) Ensure that employees have the opportunity, and are actually able, to participate in meaningful ways in the creation, execution, and management of your business strategy,

(2) Translate your business strategy into action via a strategy map and use it to tell your strategy story and engage employees further with your strategy and what it really means, and

(3) Use your strategy map to help employees see how their work contributes both directly (via business processes and strategic initiatives), and indirectly, to strategy execution success.      

 

In the end, it’s important to get your employees involved and engaged with your company and business strategy because, regardless of which business sector or industry you are in, high levels of employee engagement are good for your customers and stakeholders, your employees, and, ultimately, your business.  

 

9 Ideas You Can Implement TODAY to Make Your Organization’s Business Strategy “the Way You Work”

One of the primary goals of the strategy management effort in any company should be to create a strategy-focused organization – one where ensuring that everything in the organization (i.e. financial and non-financial resources, projects, work activities, human capital plans, etc.) is aligned with (and delivers on) the business strategy on an ongoing basis is, in a word, an obsession.

Is this the vision for your company’s strategy management efforts?

When you hear this, you might be worried that the emphasis in these organizations is more on the mechanics of achieving alignment with strategy than on the actual business strategy itself. While this is certainly a risk, the key to keeping the focus on the right thing (your dynamic business strategy and results achievement) is to make your strategy the way your organization works. When companies successfully make their strategy “the way they work”, organizational alignment seems to happen effortlessly. However, the truth is that mechanisms for organizational alignment have been created by these companies so that their business strategy framework and business strategy itself have been embedded into as many regular business processes as possible. This is the way that successful organizations make it easy to put their business strategy front and centre every day.

How can your company make your business strategy “the way you work”?

Here are nine things (in no particular order) I implemented when I was quarterbacking my employer’s strategy management efforts to do just that (p.s. the majority of my clients have also successfully implemented some or all of these nine ideas in their organizations so don’t just take my word that they work!).   

1. Make your strategy map into a huge poster and make it visible to everyone

Your strategy map is a very important strategy communication tool so don’t keep it hidden away from your employees! Almost everyone I know blows their strategy map up into a poster and then posts copies everywhere throughout their organization. I haven’t met an employee yet who hasn’t said that their company’s strategy map helped them FINALLY understand what their organization’s business strategy really was – you simply must leverage this powerful outcome! Making your strategy map visible every day to your employees puts your business strategy at the top of everyone’s minds. This opens the door for more consideration of, and discussion about, the value and validity of your company’s strategy throughout your organization.  

2. Ask every employee whether they can see what they do in the strategy map

If your strategy map is doing a good job of telling your strategy story, every one of your employees should be able to “see” their work in your strategy map. Asking each employee this question and then giving them the opportunity to discover and clearly see their role in the successful achievement of your organization’s mission and vision goes a long way towards bringing your business strategy down to the grassroots level where implementation action happens. Engagement with, and ownership of, your business strategy goes up when employees feel connected to it. Take the conversation the next step and help your employees see: (1) that their contribution to strategy achievement goes beyond the strictly functional; and (2) the inter-relationships and organizational integration required to produce the desired business performance results – doing this will increase employee understanding of how your company can achieve business success and the comprehensive role they can play in that success every day.    

3. Stop centralizing the control of your balanced scorecard results review meetings

Who runs your balanced scorecard meetings? If you are like most organizations, your BSC project manager, OSM (Office of Strategy Management) leader/personnel, or Chief Executive does. Why not try this instead – let strategic objective owners or business unit/department owners drive every BSC meeting. Give them basic guidelines on what to discuss (e.g. root cause analysis and suggested corrective action plans for underperforming indicators they are responsible for monitoring) and for how long but let them organize themselves and their team and run their section of each BSC meeting themselves. Nothing builds greater organizational engagement with, and ownership for, your business strategy than demonstrating your confidence in your employees’ ability to successfully execute their strategy management accountabilities in a way that they choose! Also, insisting that owners take responsibility for knowing how their part of the business strategy is working gives them a really good reason to be thinking about your business strategy on a regular basis.     

4. Open your balanced scorecard results review meetings to all employees (and help them get there)

Many organizations limit balanced scorecard meeting attendance to their executive team only. However, running open BSC meetings (where all employees can attend) signals that everyone in your company has a role to play in the successful execution of your business strategy. Open BSC meetings give you an invaluable forum for information exchange, knowledge sharing, and integrated business solution and idea generation. Plus, open meetings help everyone in your organization make time for business strategy as part of their regular job/work activities but only if you actually give employees a way to get to these meetings. This is particularly challenging but important in the case of frontline workers. I have seen lots of creative solutions implemented to get past these hurdles like taking meetings and discussions about BSC results to employees/the shop floor. What creative solutions could you employ to make your BSC meetings accessible to everyone in your company?        

5. Align your employee performance management/appraisal framework and process with your business strategy

Your performance management process is perhaps THE strategy alignment opportunity that has the most meaning to your employees. Since your employees give lots of attention to their personal goal plan, why not add elements of your business strategy to its format (e.g. balanced scorecard perspectives and strategic objectives)? Some of the best solutions I have seen show an employee how their personal goals directly support the achievement of specific strategic objectives. In addition, regular performance management conversations between employees and their manager offer an opportunity to make the discussion of strategy, its relevance to every day work, and the sharing of ideas for strategy improvement a regular work activity for every employee. The result of discussions like these is increased understanding of, and commitment to, the business strategy and high quality, two-way, strategy-focused information and knowledge exchange throughout your organization.         

6. Formalize and recognize strategy management accountabilities

Strategy execution excellence can only be achieved through a network of owners (i.e. strategic objective owners, indicator data and commentary owners, process and project owners, etc.) – they all play a critical role in the success of your strategy management efforts. The first step is to assign these ownership roles throughout your organization but you must take it a step further. You’ve got to formalize these responsibilities by including them in job descriptions and employee goal plans and then including an assessment of the completion of these ownership roles as part of the annual review process. Doing this signals the importance of taking ownership of, and accountability for, your business strategy and securely places it into one of the core management structures in your organization.  

7. Reward and recognize employees for taking action that supports your business strategy

Most organizations have a reward and recognition program in place. These programs play a critical role in re-inforcing desired behavior so why not align your reward criteria with your business strategy? In the best cases I have seen, core values and strategic objectives become the criteria and doing something that supports or impacts these elements of the business strategy is rewarded and recognized via a simple program. When you recognize and share the story of what an employee did, you start breaking down barriers (i.e. what can I do to impact the business strategy from here?) and provide employees with models of putting your strategy in action that they can emulate. The moment that your employees start rewarding and recognizing each other for strategy-supporting actions and behaviors, you will know that you have really made your strategy “the way you work”.  

8. Build your business strategy into your decision making processes

All companies have formal and/or informal decision making processes with some sort of associated criteria for making business decisions. What criteria does your organization use? You might include a risk assessment and/or an evaluation of return on investment. Does alignment with business strategy come into the picture? Organizations that are striving to live their business strategy will include (1) an assessment of alignment with strategic objectives, and (2) an assessment of strategic value as key components of their business decision making criteria. In fact, many will place a relatively high weighting on these two factors alone. Including strategy-based criteria in your business decision making process profoundly changes the way your employees begin to think about what they do because it brings your strategy into every option discussion and decision made throughout your company.   

9. “Talk” about your strategy all the time - forever

In the worst case scenarios, an organization’s strategic plan sits on a shelf gathering dust. To actually achieve strategy execution excellence, your business strategy must be front and centre to the workings of your organization. One of the best ways to do that is to have a solid strategy communication plan, with varying messages and using multiple communication modes, that you implement on an ongoing basis as the way you do business. It is important to realize, however, that what you talk about when I say “strategy” changes over time. The best organizations I have seen start off with the executive leader sharing the business strategy with the organization and then they gradually transition to sharing “homegrown” stories about the strategy in action. Success is achieved when employees put their own spin on your strategy and what it looks like in action, volunteer to share their own strategy in action stories with their peers, and begin discussing their ideas for strategic improvement freely. This is truly an example of making your strategy the way you work.      

 

Making your business strategy the way your organization works doesn’t happen overnight – a good reason to start now! Looking for ways to build your business strategy and business strategy framework into your company sooner than later can help your organization realize the return on its investment in strategy management principles and practices earlier than expected.

Be Here Next Year: The 4 Point Plan for Your Business to Survive (and maybe even thrive!) in a Tough Economy

Bankruptcy and slow business growth continue to plague businesses of all sizes across North America and around the world. For example, while the number of business bankruptcy filings in the USA has remained relatively steady through 2010 when compared to 2009 numbers (58,322 for 2010 to September 30^th versus 58,721 for the same period in 2009), the 2010 results at September 30^th show a 151% increase over 2008 filing results (38, 651) and a 225% increase over 2007 filing results (25,925) for the same period (January 1^st – September 30^th) (data source: http://www.bankruptcyaction.com/USbankstats.htm).

When I talk to business leaders about their goals for their company for the upcoming year, many respond simply by saying “to still be here next year”. It may sound as though these executives are setting the bar a bit low but in a sagging economy, and in really tough industries like manufacturing, just making it successfully through another year can feel like a stretch goal. For these organizations, surviving to do business another day/month/year represents a huge victory for their leaders, their employees, their customers, and their business partners.

Is your company in the “be here next year” goal club?

If it is, here’s your dilemma: you need to do something different to achieve this goal but you don’t have the time and extra resources to embark on a complicated turnaround plan. For you, the themes for your business survival are going to be focus, effective action, efficient operations, and priority-based decision making. Bottom line? You don’t have the time or the resources to waste your organization’s effort on things that aren’t critical to producing results. What you need is a streamlined game plan that will position your company to, at minimum, still be here next year, and, at best, grow over the longer term.

Here’s the streamlined game plan you need: a four point plan, supported by five “must have” organizational capabilities, you can implement in your company to survive (and maybe even thrive) in the current economy.

 
The “Must Have” Organizational Capabilities

 Here are the five organizational capabilities, or core principles, your company must adopt today to survive and thrive moving forward. These are described here in “behavioural” terms (i.e. what they look like in action) so that (1) you and your employees have a better chance of actually implementing them; and (2) you can assess through observation whether people in your organization are putting these required capabilities into action because the successful implementation of these core principles requires every one in your organization to live them every day.   

Focus: Everyone across our organization has a laser focus, bordering on obsession, on what is most critical to the success of our business. This means that we are always asking such questions as: “Is this the right thing to do (and how can we do it right - i.e. effectively, efficiently, and with excellence)?”, “Will this help us get to where we need to go?”, and “How does this decision fit with our business priorities?” Such a pervasive drive to do what will produce the business results we desire over both the short and long term is critical to our organization’s success.  

Leadership: Our executives, managers, and supervisors are committed to hands on leadership. This means actively facilitating and modeling all of the organizational capabilities we are committed to adopting AND taking highly visible steps to ensure that our company implements all of the elements of the four point plan. Asking knowledgeable questions in group forums and one on one situations about the fundamentals of proposed action plans, testing their validity, probing on action plan progress, and facilitating cross-organizational dialogue are examples of the critical actions our leaders take to be dynamically involved in ensuring the success of our organization.

Engagement: We know that the success of our company relies on the participation of our people. To be successful, every one of us is involved and invested in producing great business results. One way our employees do this is by actively participating in creating our business strategy. Because of this they understand it and can see how their work links with, and contributes to, business results achievement. Everyone takes part in meaningful, two-way dialogue on our strategy, and business priorities, and what it takes to implement it. By encouraging and helping everyone to participate in the process of strategic improvement, and by supporting healthy cross-functional discussion and collaboration, we continuously build a commitment to focused business results achievement that extends right down to the front lines of our organization.

Action: We are committed to taking intelligent and disciplined but imperfect action in business situations. While we always think before we act, we don’t get caught up in “analysis paralysis”. We know that it is better to take action, implement a solution that is 80% right, and then improve it as we go than it is to wait to implement a perfect solution. We have a bias for putting our business priorities into action because we know that, at the end of the day, actually DOING what we think is right for the short and long term success of our company is the only chance we have of actually achieving our desired business results.   

Accountability: Everyone in our organization is dedicated to taking action, following through, and building a record of accomplishment. This level of commitment is actively supported, valued, recognized, and rewarded by our business leaders on an ongoing basis. All of us are able to live this culture of accountability because we take the time to work together to link every action to a person who has responsibility for getting it done (right and on time), and we accept shared responsibility for results achievement.

 

The Four Point Plan

The essential and differentiating feature of this plan is its almost ruthless dedication to focus: a focus on the most critical elements of your business that will deliver the success you want and, once that is defined, an unrelenting focus throughout your organization on keeping all eyes on the ball and taking the most effective path to excellence and results achievement. Follow this plan and execute it in a never-ending cycle to keep your business viable over both the short and long term.   

 

1. Focus Position and Direction

 The goal of the first point in the plan is to leverage a clear understanding of your organization’s operating environment and define a razor sharp value proposition that will allow you to satisfy your customers/stakeholders and win markets.

To understand your operating environment, it is critical that you scan your roster of customers/stakeholders and create a focused list. If individual stakeholders have similar needs and expectations (which you will document and list in order from most important need/expectation on down for each stakeholder), it is often more convenient from a stakeholder management approach to think about some of these individual stakeholders as a group. Once your list has been assembled, it is important to prioritize it – that is, place your stakeholders in rank order from 1 (most important). While you will never share this information with your stakeholders, ranking stakeholders/customers provides your organization and people with an important tool for more focused decision-making moving forward.

You must also scan your market space and review the performance of others who play there to fully re-assess and understand the potential in the market. A variety of decisions will arise through this review including what market space you should/want to play in. The goal here is to be focused in identifying that market space and then defining very clearly what it takes to capture/maintain/grow your share of it.

Finally, once your target market has been established, it is essential to crystallize the value proposition your organization must adopt and deliver to achieve your market share goals. Whether you are re-focusing your value proposition or re-defining it, it is important to leverage the information learned about your stakeholders/customers, as well as performance requirements, when designing the focused value proposition required to achieve your desired business results.     

 

2. Map Priorities

The goal of the next point in this plan is to define, in language that everyone in your organization can relate to, the value chain your organization must implement to deliver your value proposition and the components of that value chain, or relative business priorities, all parts of your organization must focus on over a defined period of time. The best approach to defining this value chain is to create a strategy map for your organization. As well as providing a visual picture of your value creation strategy (in the form of strategic objectives), the strategy map translates your strategy into clearly defined terms so that front line employees can see themselves, and their work, in it. Developing a consistent understanding of what your strategy looks like in action translates into a higher probability of business results achievement.

A weighted strategy map allows your organization to communicate the relative priority of the various strategic objectives on your strategy map. When done right, this weighting focuses the decision-making of all employees on a daily basis and helps them determine where to best target/invest the often limited resources available to them.

By helping everyone in your organization see where they fit into your value creation plan/strategy and your business priorities, you are in a better position to engage them in discovering how they can contribute to, and actually achieve, business performance success.   

 

3. Resource & Work the Plan

Once your business strategy has been focused, the goal of this point in the plan is to focus the operational activities and actions of your organization to produce your desired business results in a way that is takes the most effective and efficient path to business performance excellence.

A critical success factor for the execution of your company’s value creating strategy is maximizing organizational alignment. Organizational alignment reduces the drag in your business operations, improving efficiency and effectiveness. One important way of doing this is to inventory your core business projects and current strategic projects and line them up with your value creating strategic objectives and key business priorities. This allows you to identify critical business performance gaps, eliminate non-contributing business activities, and free up resources for re-deployment to more business critical activities. This is an important step in effectively resourcing your business plan without adding significant additional costs. The fact is that identifying the financial and non-financial resources that are absolutely necessary for business plan implementation success is a critical step in the strategy execution process. If these resources are missing and/or are not aligned with your business priorities, you must put them in place in the most cost-effective way possible. The absolute truth is that you cannot successfully achieve your desired business results without targeted resource support.

Another critical step in ensuring successful operational execution of your business strategy involves cascading your business priorities appropriately into every employee’s work plans. Doing this will ensure that there is no doubt across the organization as to where to focus day to day work efforts. Finally, you must be sure to support successful implementation and strategy execution with: clear accountabilities at all levels of your organization for action completion and results achievement; an attention to performance feedback that helps keep employees focused on replicating activities that produce the desired business results; and good two-way communications to channel ideas that strategic and operational improvement up, down, and across your organization.   

4. Make SMART Decisions

The goal here is simply to make intelligent business decisions that will directly impact and enhance the focus in, and of, your business strategy, action plans, and operations.

Face it – business is all about making decisions. Both day to day operational decisions and the big directional decisions contribute to the overall success of your organization. To help ensure that the decisions made in your company stay focused on moving you towards the business outcomes you require as effortlessly as possible, it is important to provide your people with information (i.e. data and results analysis/commentary) that tells them whether the business is moving forward. The best tool for this is still the balanced scorecard. When coupled with a dashboard of the operational measures that drive the performance of strategic indicators, the balanced scorecard helps your people learn about what is and isn’t working in your business, identify and focus on the critical strategic issues, and fix the root cause problems that are hindering positive progress on your business priorities.

When it finally comes to making decisions in your business, taking a consistent approach across your entire organization will help ensure that the actions taken as a result of these decisions remain focused on moving your organization forward according to business priorities and desired business performance outcomes. This consistent approach can be achieved by implementing a new filter or criteria into the conversation and decision-making process. Implementing the SMART criteria detailed below provides your company with the effective filter you need to ensure that all of your employees are taking a consistent approach and making business decisions that you know will support the direction and priorities of your business:          

S = strategy-focused: use alignment with key business/strategic priorities as the first criteria when weighing options and making decisions – the more aligned an option is with business priorities, the better it is  

M = manage the risk: managing and/or mitigating risks are important for business success so make business decisions with risk in mind – make choices that allow you to manage (or eliminate) associated risks most effectively

A = actionable: defer to options that your organization can put into action with the capabilities and resources it has today – while this can limit your options at times, taking this approach to option evaluation facilitates execution and minimizes associated costs

R = return on investment (ROI): the speed and value of the return, if any, to be gained through the implementation of certain options should play into the decision-making process – the quicker a high return is realized, the better it can be for your business

T = timely: related to the “actionability” of an option, it is important to consider how quickly your organization can implement options under consideration – the sooner options or solutions can be implemented, the sooner your organization will reap the benefits  

Most organizations will use all of these criteria in a structured way to evaluate and assess choices and guide option selection. The way your organization chooses to apply the criteria will be specific to your business needs, however, the key to success is to apply them consistent across your business in decision-making situations.

 

So, this is your four point plan. As you can see, the plan is a cyclical system that must be implemented on a never-ending basis. Your organization must work the system by: constantly revisiting each point in the plan; checking validity, current assumptions, and learning; assessing progress; and looking for (and implementing) opportunities for improvement. Cycling through the plan in this way is a critical success factor for the survival of your business.        

There is no doubt that there are many more actions you can take and management principles you can implement to ensure that your company will survive and thrive into the future. However, based on my experience working with many organizations in turnaround situations, this is the focused plan/approach required to turn the tide, make it successfully through the short term, and begin building the capacity and organizational capability required for longer term viability.

If you are concerned about whether your company will still be here next year, I encourage you to begin implementing this proven system for success today.

Leading for Strategy Success (a message for all employees)

Who provides strategic leadership in successful organizations? If you think this kind of leadership is just for executives, VP’s, and Senior Managers, then I want to challenge you to think again. I particularly want to challenge ALL employees, particularly those on the frontline, in every business, to see him or herself as a strategy leader.

 

The truth is that everyone can be a strategy leader whether they are in a formal leadership role or not. Did you know that long-term business success can only happen when everyone takes the initiative to work together to create, implement, and improve their company’s business strategy? At its core, this is what being a strategy leader is all about.

 

The fact is that it would take a very long time for companies to move forward, grow, and be successful if they waited for the business executives alone to come up with all the great ideas relating to strategic direction and strategy. It is impossible for this small group of employees to have the comprehensive and detailed view of the business and the insights required to achieve quantum leaps forward in business.

 

When you think about it you realize that it’s almost crazy to think that a handful of people could have all the knowledge needed to achieve this result! However, this is how most businesses operate today. They put pressure on their executives to have all the strategic insights required to produce exceptional business results.   

 

But what if businesses tapped into the knowledge, wisdom, and insights of everyone involved in, and with, their organization to build, manage, and improve strategy?

 

Imagine what strategic insights could be gathered from such a large group of people with their deep knowledge of their part of the business and where the opportunities are! And imagine if this large group of people contributed these insights on an ongoing basis throughout the strategy creation, management, and improvement process. Can you imagine how powerful and successful such an organization would be, regardless of what their definition of success looked like? (e.g. educating girls and women in Afghanistan, eliminating poverty in your community, growing market share and profits, etc)

 

Well, this is exactly what happens when everyone in an organization is a strategy leader.

 

Here’s what you can do today to be a strategy leader in your company:

 

1. Really Understand the Business Strategy

Get to know the strategy, including the core values, strategic objectives, business priorities, and strategic action plans, and practice telling others the strategy story using your company’s strategy map.

 

2. “See” Your Work in the Strategic Plan

Make sure that you can clearly see how you contribute every day to successful strategy execution. Think beyond the obvious functional connections – you contribute in more ways than you might first imagine!

  

3. Put the Strategic Objectives to Work Every Day

Successful strategy execution happens day after day so bring the strategic objectives you play a role in to work with you every day. It is important that you consciously put them into action in as many work situations as possible.

 

4. Work with Others to Make the Business Strategy Even Better

Because you are putting the business strategy into action every day, no one knows better than you, and your co-workers, where the opportunities for improvement are. Take action and make required improvements, or feed your ideas back into the strategy improvement process.

 

5. Practice Thinking Strategically

Look at issues and new opportunities from a strategic perspective and always ask: “Is this the right thing to do in light of our strategy?” When the answer is “yes”, embrace changes that will help move the business strategy forward.

 

6. Ask Lots of Questions – About Everything!

Ask probing and insightful questions when presented with issues and opportunities. Use the answers to these questions to assess potential and analyze the value of an idea or action in relation to the strategy and to improve the strategy itself.

 

7. Leverage Strategic Information to Make Good Decisions

Access strategic information, like balanced scorecard results, to understand what is going on inside and outside your company. Use this information to make strategic decisions, establish priorities for your team’s work, and set targeted goals.

 

8. Focus on Building Alignment with Business Strategy

Organizational alignment and synergy are critical for strategy achievement. This means that you must contribute to ensuring that all work is lined up with the business strategy. Do what you can to make this alignment and synergy happen and be sure to speak out when you see things falling short.

 

Of course, the executive team MUST help all employees be strategy leaders by actively offering encouragement and support. The old style of leadership and management control will not allow your organization to realize the full benefits of this new approach. A new style of leadership is required to successfully engage and mobilize strategy leaders at all levels of an organization.

 

It’s worth the effort to change.

 

When everyone in an organization works together to put these eight actions into practice, the company will be better positioned to successfully formulate and execute its business strategy, and achieve the exceptional business performance results everyone in your company is striving for.

 

And besides – it’s more fun to work in an organization where you play a vital and active role in its success!