This is the time of year when senior leaders in organizations of all sizes lock in their annual plans and go home with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. Unfortunately, by the middle of January (in most cases), it’s painfully clear that the warmth of the plan has turned out more like the opening scene in a Freddy Krueger movie.
As an ex-Fortune 100 leader, I can tell you from experience that it is so much easier to design strategy than implement it. The Drucker quote about culture eating strategy for breakfast is rediscovered year after year.
I am frequently called in to assess the gap between strategy and execution, and since getting off on the right foot is key in Quarter 1, I wanted to highlight some tips that leaders can use in advance to make sure their firms embrace the strategic direction that the senior team agreed upon.
Here are three places of examination to make sure your plan is on track for the coming year:
#1: It’s not a blank slate
Every person inside every firm has an operating strategy and a set of daily behaviors they’ve developed – either with the firm, or earlier in their career. These behaviors are based in very deeply held stories about how they see the firm, and the product or service the firm produces. No matter how much it makes sense to the senior team, each member of the firm will take actions based on what appears to be rational action to them. The first step in moving a firm to a new operations behavior, is to find and acknowledge the active (and usually undocumented) narrative that employees have of the market, your firm’s place in it, and their specific role. There are several ways to accomplish this:
- Talk to several people on the shop floor or in customer service. A favorite tool of consultants is to grab coffee and donuts and go in through the loading dock door. By talking to the dock, the people in the break room and QC, you’ll get a good idea of the internal message.
- Enlist a trusted partner or customer. This is where collaboration can be key, for our closest partners will usually know and speak the truth when asked.
- Get some windshield time with sales and ask them what they are hearing from the “main office.”
#2: There are three layers in every firm, and each needs its own message
Regardless of how many vertical pay grades you have, there are essentially three layers in every firm:
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- The first is the senior team, whose fundamental role is to guide the organization into business models and markets that the firm can thrive in.
- The second is the middle team, which creates operations that serve the direction developed by the senior team and creates accountable organizations made up of people, processes and equipment, with appropriate controls.
- Third and lastly, there are independent contributors who come in every day and make it all happen.
Every person will take rational action based on their specific position in the firm and the perceived costs and benefits for them.
To bend behavior to the new direction, each member of the firm needs to be able to clearly see how the change benefits them. To make this happen, your people need to see that you’ve done your homework and taken the time to examine the value for each group. Here’s an example:
Let’s say you’re seeking a new market using a “force field” analysis for the benefit of the middle management group. On the positive side of the ledger, a new market will require talent to develop the market analysis and entry approach, providing new opportunities. On the negative side, the short-term additional effort will fall to the existing staff to complete the beta testing for the new venture.
Note that I used the word see and not hear – organizations are very aware that talk is talk, but actions count. If the senior team says one thing and behaves differently, the firm will always align with behavior. Last point, the most resistant layer in the firm is the middle management team – always.
#3: Sometimes it’s better to make it good before you make it big
One of the best ways to get an organization to change is to infect it with change – not demand it. The masters of this strategy use it to develop a kernel of success, then allow the peer groups to observe and copy. I have used this approach for putting sales specialists in place for strategic new products and services; by finding one account manager who is a peer leader, and teaching him how to sell the new value proposition (and in the process blow away his quota), word travels fast. It’s amazing how much better it is to be asked to lead a session for the sales and marketing team when one of their peers has just made their annual quota by June.
Investing early to make sure your 2015 plan is well deployed will allow you to get your year off to a great start. We all know if you miss Q1, you will be playing catch up for the rest of the year. Getting that great start means walking in the shoes of your front line employees – and making sure they execute well.
There are many dimensions to getting off to a great start, and I would love to hear more about your experiences. If you have a thought or comment, please drop me an email or tweet me.
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