As the new year unfolds, any successful business wants to maximize the connection between overall business strategy, annual goals and actual, daily employee behavior. While this is intuitively obvious, it is not so easily done.
A few critical things get in the way. For one, leaders and managers often think that because the overall strategy is clear and exciting to them (in their minds), it must be obvious and exciting to everyone else. Not true.
Second, most employees like to do what they know how to do and do well. It provides one with a sense of competence and value. If the strategy requires people to do new and different things, they may not feel sure, clear or confident about it. It’s a good bet that old “comfortable” behaviors will win out. Fancy strategy be damned.
And third, most human beings have a strong need to make sense of the world in tangible ways, to create a world that is predictable on a daily basis. Strategy is a concept; annual goals are out there in the future. Neither is under my control today, and what is most tangible and predictable is what I do today.
Here are three simple things highly successful leaders and managers do to help build that effective connection between strategy, annual goals and employees’ daily work behaviors, so that everyone is rowing the company boat with optimal effort and contribution:
ONE: Say it. Say it again and again. Say it in pictures. Say it in numbers. Say it in stories.
It is almost impossible to communicate overall strategy too much. Announcing it once at the beginning of the year is experienced as the annual cheerleading cry. It is just words. Successful leaders build the strategic message into ongoing communications in a range of ways, all through the year. For example, it should be the opening agenda item at all key meetings, illustrated by customer and employee stories, key numbers, an image, picture or repeating symbol — things that are tangible and memorable. This helps people be able to say to themselves, “Oh, so that’s what the strategy is about. Now I see why I am being asked to do things in a different way!”
TWO: Tell Less, Invite More
Successful managers minimize telling people what to do and maximize laying out short term and longer term goals — and then inviting employees to specify how they believe they can best achieve those goals, within the rules and parameters of the job and company policies. This taps into people’s natural motivations to want to implement their own best solutions, not what someone else just tells them to do.
Children value instruction; most adults value respect and autonomy. For example, one very successful manager we have worked with makes it a habit to meet with her employee team over lunch every quarter and simply remind them of the overall strategy and annual supporting goals, and then asks “What are you doing, what do you want to share with each other that is best helping you get things done well in support of our overall business strategy and goals?” She is often amazed at the ideas and energy this creates. She also discovers valuable ideas that she has not thought of herself. And the dialogue also enables her to clarify, in a timely and comfortable way, strategy and goals that people may be unclear about.
THREE: Formalize “Why am I doing this?”
Even if you do a great job on the above first two actions, it is inevitable that people will do things and work on things that are not clearly or directly supportive of strategy and goals. Something gets delegated or assigned because it’s a hot topic, projects get started, people in power say they need things, etc. Time, energy and focus get lost.
Given the politics and power of most organizational structures, employees will not feel free to ask why they are being asked to do certain things, even when it is unclear to them how it supports larger strategy and goals. Permission needs to be clear and explicit in order to challenge power and authority.
One successful leader we know uses the “Why am I doing this?” rule. He informs all employees they have the right, even the obligation, to ask about work or activity when they cannot easily and clearly see the link between what they are doing on a given day and the larger overall strategy and annual goals. Sometimes, the connection can then be made clear by the manager or other leader, and sometimes a habit or activity has crept into the system that really does not support the bigger picture. It should then be stopped — and the employee thanked.
Using these three simple ideas will help everyone realize that the goal at work is to be strategically productive every day, not just busy, busy, busy.
Allan Polak is the president of ALP Consulting Resources based in West Hartford. Reach him at www.ALPConsultingResources.com.
