Your Organization Doesn’t Care About Your Strategy.
Because they don’t know what it is.
We need to talk about your employees. Your team members. The people who are entrusted to carry out your vision and support your mission. You trust them to do their job and to do it well. But how well can they do it when they don’t know what your strategy is?
According to The Harvard Business Review, 95% of employees don’t know their organization’s strategy. 95%.
This contributes to 61% of organizations not bridging the gap between strategy and execution. So, the important question is: how can your organization land in the 39%?
Make and keep your strategy simple
Your organization doesn’t need a 20 page strategy. You should be able to effectively communicate your vision in one page for the following reasons:
The quicker you, as a leader, can communicate your strategy, the more often you can share it. In a world full of distractions, leadership must cut straight to the point and answer three questions: this is what we do, this is why we do it, and this is who we serve.
A simple strategy allows your team members to not only grasp the strategy and vision, but then communicate it more effectively to others. Who can promote your organization better than someone who is on the ground, doing the work?
A “simple” strategy becomes practical and easier to execute. We aren’t discussing pie in the sky desires, but tangible actions that will lead to real results. The outcomes of these actions can then be measures and communicated to encourage more buy-in.
Champion and nurture your vision
More often than not, leadership will have some type of yearly “strategic planning” (more on that phrase in another post) retreat or day long meeting and create a “strategy” that ends up collecting figurative dust in the company’s shared cloud. The outcomes of this meeting may be shared in a newsletter (that most people won’t read) if at all.
So what can you do differently? Come back with your strategy and promote it, regularly. Communicate to your leaders and organization where you see the company going, what you’re doing to get there, and how everyone is needed to help it succeed. Your strategy isn’t a one and done document; it is a living framework that explains how your organization delivers value to your customers. It should be the metric by which everything you do is judged—because what is more important than that?
Encourage ownership
Finally, if your strategy is simple, and you can communicate it effectively, the next step is to encourage ownership. As a leader, it is your responsibility to ensure members of your team or organization know how they fit. You have to articulate how they can contribute to the vision, what value they bring, and why what they bring is not only necessary but important.
