Cascading Strategy, Ascending Goals

You can have it all, further your strategy and goals that inspire people. Thomas Edison said “a strategy without a plan is hallucination.”  When it comes to the strategic and tactical, one does not live long without the other. Though strategy articulates where the organization wants to go, in today's knowledge economy, people cannot simply be told what to do to get there. It is often up to people to figure out how to get there in the course of the work they (want to) do. "Want to do" is the inspiration catalyst to executing strategy so that people persist in helping to achieve it; in fact hard goals correlate with persistence. But first people have to really understand the strategy and where the organization is placing its bets.

How far does your strategy reach?

For all the lip service paid to cascading strategy to all levels,”it’s not unusual for an organization to acknowledge that they have no strategic business plan beyond a few, well-articulated talking points. Whether any strategy document actually exists, is uniformly known, accepted, and used (as well as up-to-date), is still a mystery to too many managers.” (Kallas, Kosta, Neuman)  One reason for this is strategy is a dynamic moving target… so it requires continuous affirmation and communication.  What are your systems and institutionalized practices to affirm strategy?  Baldrige winning organizations who have consistently outperformed the S&P 500, have established practices to ensure: 
 

•  A vision and strategic plan for meeting customer requirements shared by top leadership guides staff’s day to day decisions.

• Continuous planning, goal setting, workforce planning, and budgeting based on performance measures of key customers’ current and anticipated requirements.

Got capital to execute your strategy? (human capital, that is)

A study in Harvard Business Review “How to help employees get your strategy” confirms employees whose overall view of their company is positive are more likely to understand and agree with the company’s strategy.  But surprisingly length of service did not automatically correlate with understanding the current strategy. My hypothesis is that people can fall into a comfort zone/“auto pilot” mode and get out of touch.  It’s documented that people who have been in their roles for five years have mastered their competencies; however if they are not engaged in developmental stretch roles, their productivity drops. Leaders can solve for this through smart deployment. Reviewing your talent, particularly A players, to deploy individuals into critical roles to execute strategy and develop innovative products and services, is an optimal use of human capital resources. Hindustan Unilever regularly reviews where their 50 best performers are deployed, to ensure they in the most strategic jobs.

 

Communicate directly from the top and often.  Communication standards show that important messages need to be communicated in seven different ways, and not delegated or watered down by communicating through others.  Politicians' campaign managers get their candidate's facetime and platform in front of constituencies; it’s the same with making sure leaders personally communicate strategy throughout your organization, using several mediums. Many leaders tirelessly talk of their vision but are not as explicit or thorough at communicating their strategy--it's time to be more transparent about strategy. If the analysts want to know your strategy for shareholders, so do the stakeholders within your organization, and if they don't know, you're leaving strategy execution to chance. 

 

Use ascending goals to support strategy.  How do organizations ensure their strategy cascades so that workers’ daily decisions and behaviors support the firm’s competitive intentions?  Rather than rely on cascading goals, try ascending goals.  An efficient process for this is called “15-5” .  Here's how it works-- everyone spends 15 mnutes writing what they did each week to advance the strategy; their manager takes five minutes to read it, and takes 15 minutes to summarize everyone's input for the top team. If people have to be selective about what they write about, they will write about what inspires them the most and what they think is most important to the organization.  An e-collaboration space would be an effective transparent forum for ascending goals. Zappos makes their culture book (written by everyone) transparent; similarly an organization could make their dynamic "strategy book" transparent. Instead of hiding all that good work in a performance management system, if this technology was named as "strategy management" it would engage people more. 

Josh Bersin notes, "many companies have focused heavily on implementing complex 'cascading goals' programs through the use of talent management software... such programs do not necessarily drive alignment or engagement in the company's strategy as much as we may have believed...because they are too rigid and hard to change. In today's volatile and agile work environment... it's important for top leaders to [use an] 'agile model of management'."  If you're driving strategy and change, agility is an essential organizational capability. 

So we can have it both ways-- strategy cascading down to people at all levels who make it happen and inspired tactical goals ascending to support the strategy, because the reality is one cannot endure without the other.

What are your thoughts and practices in this area?  Drop me a line... 

Count on the Talent Around You

I watched a TV show on Nova about how smart, sensitive, and social wild turkeys are.  Apparently humans have not given them enough credit, as we’ve domesticated them to live in conditions that perpetuate constant competition and fear.  Accepting stereotypes, such as, “turkeys are stupid,” made me think we overlook fresh answers to perpetual questions, such as, “Why did the chicken cross the road (despite the danger of cars speeding by)?”  I apologize up front about the metaphor of animals as people, though since other respected authors (George Orwell, in Animal Farm, and Tuck professors VJ Govindarajan and Chris Trimble in How Stella Saved the Farm) have done so to convey thoughtful lessons, I am in good company. So I repeat---

Why did the chicken cross the road?  
• because it wanted to  (had a purpose)
• because there were several animated chickens on the other side (wanted partnership)
• because it was invited (had permission)
• because the chicken knew something more was possible  (wanted progress)
• because that’s where the cool leaders invested their time (sought protection)
• because conditions for success on their side of the road had changed (needed new proficiency)
• because other chickens found it worthwhile (experienced payoff)
• all of the above

Everyone has intrinsic motivation and passion to achieve mastery and meaningful purpose. However when people join organizations, unknowingly, their leaders ask them to check their aspirations at the door and “sign on” to the organization’s or department’s goals, missing a huge opportunity to align people’s individual motivations and passions with shared goals.  Many leaders ask people to work in conditions that perpetuate constant competition and fear, particularly in a challenged economy. Conveying to staff an intentional experience of collaborative leadership is the first step towards igniting people’s innate desire to commit. Modeling collaboration as a competency creates a motivating environment for staff to engage with peers over shared passions.  Moreover, research from Interaction Associates shows that collaborative organizations typically exceed their revenue targets by ten percent.

Be tactical. Collaboration by definition does not exist in isolation; eight additional competencies- Communicate, Measure, Cultivate, Motivate, Coach, Model, Celebrate and Manage are essentials mastered by all effective managers.  When these competencies are demonstrated, staff experience Purpose, Progress, Partnership, Permission, Protection, Proficiency, Pride and Payoff by design.  The rocket fuel these managers add to their organization’s capability comes from their teams developing and performing to their potential, and continually pushing their boundaries.  Managers using this tactical approach make immediate headway in any change initiative.

Be strategic. No doubt you've heard that when a good person works in a bad system that the system ultimately wins.  What's needed on a strategic level, are strong systems/institutionalized practices to maintain momentum, overcome barriers, overcome resistance and sustain support.   When systems become outdated or are not intentionally strengthened, they can restrain staff performance so that people get mixed messages about fulfilling their potential.  As leaders we can strengthen systems to encourage rather than squash or inhibit motivation and collaboration.   Systems around affirming strategy, measurement, communication, autonomy, innovation, reinforcement, and talent development need to be aligned with manager competencies staff experience.

Align tactical and strategic focus.
Aligning systems and competencies creates organizational capability characterized by energy, agility, and sustained performance.  Without this alignment, organizations are at risk of becoming apathetic and stagnant, leading to erosion of brand and market share. 

Are you counting your chickens before they're hatched?

Domesticated chickens don’t even have the option of crossing the road unless they fly the coop.  If you lead people, you may be fooling yourself that your "chickens" won't fly the coop to another organization if given half a chance, and you may be counting your chickens before they are hatched.  Leaders often think that by announcing the new business strategy (if they do so at all), that is enough for people to commit and execute with their heart and soul. But one day soon, they won’t have the desired department performance or competitive advantage and will wonder how it happened, as the rest of the world around has adapted to changing requirements and opportunities.

Today people are living outside the traditional organizational boundaries in collaboration spaces. Supported by leadership competencies and organizational systems that foster their potential, even people beyond your boundaries can invest their talent in shared goals, and choose your organization as the place to do their life’s work.

If you love your people, let them go; when they don't fly away but cluster together to collaborate and innovate, you know they're committed.

What's been your experience with collaborative leadership?  Drop me a line...