So, you don’t have a strategy, but you’ve decided that it’s time for your team, your department, your function, or even your organization to have one. This is the last step in our strategic planning series—and this is a really important step, because it’s about how we cascade the strategy to everyone in the organization.
Identify Your Purpose
One thing you’ll want to do is put your entire strategy on a piece of paper, what I call a Strategy Map. At the top, state your organization’s purpose. Right beneath that, list the three or four strategic goals that determine whether you’ve future-proofed your organization. Then, in the next level, highlight the most important opportunities and threats you’re seeing in the environment.
Once you have that down, you can—using big, bright, beautiful print in catchy language—articulate your strategy. Think about your imperatives. How does your organization need to think differently? With your imperatives in place, you can finally map out strategic projects underneath. But don’t make the mistake of communicating those projects as your strategy. They’re the tactics that you’re using to implement your strategy, not the strategy itself.
The reason this matters in that, in many organizations, people who aren’t working directly on one of the strategic projects often don’t feel any sense of ownership of the strategy. And that’s just a huge loss of brainpower and horsepower for implementing your strategy.
Communicate with Everyone
Instead, when you roll out your strategy, keep in mind that those imperatives also have the second purpose of ensuring that everyone in your organization, regardless of their role, understands what they should be focusing on in their daily activities.
Many years ago, I was working with a smaller technology company that was competing against a much larger competitor. I think they had only about 8% market share and nowhere near the research and development funding that the big guys did, so they couldn’t compete everywhere. Nevertheless, they found a way to compete by realizing that their technology was really advanced in some ways and they had a shot to win in the sexiest, coolest, bleeding-edge parts of the industry, which at the time was computer gaming and digital animation. They figured out that in order to make an impact in the most innovative and dynamic segments of the industry, they needed to be seen as cutting edge and cool. This realization led to the imperative that they needed to be perceived as “cool” to earn the right to have conversations with Pixar or Nintendo.
This cool imperative led to some really interesting strategic projects, with big bets on features in their products that were designed to be really cool—but the key thing was, it wasn’t just about those big bet decisions. It was also about how everyone, every day, makes different decisions to be cooler. Recruiters began looking for talent that fit the gaming mold and understood the preferences and expectations of gamers. Marketing events and branding strategies became aligned with this cool, cutting-edge image.
Communicating this imperative to everyone in the organization meant that every department, from HR to marketing, and not just engineering, understood the strategic importance of positioning themselves in a different space, of coming across with a different feel. It was incredibly powerful when every individual in the company could align their decisions and actions with the goal of making the organization cooler and more competitive in the niche they had identified as their opportunity to stand out even against the Goliath that they were fighting.
So, when you communicate your strategy, emphasize your purpose, the importance of everyone understanding and contributing to the very small set of the strategic goals. Talk about what’s changing in the environment around you and how those changes create opportunities—but also threats—for you, and how your current strengths and weaknesses match up against those opportunities and threats.
Make Your Strategic Imperatives Come to Life
Spend time making your strategic imperatives come to life. Use stories, videos, and engaging language so every person in every department understands they can think differently and align their actions with those imperatives. That’s the power of a great strategy.
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I hope you’ve enjoyed this series. I hope it has helped you create a strategic planning conversation in your organization. You don’t need to hire a consulting firm. You don’t need an MBA and you don’t need to wear a suit to have a great strategic conversation. You just need to be asking yourself the right questions—not just about whether you’re healthy as an organization today, but about whether you’re doing what you need to make sure you’re healthy in the future.
Strategic Planning Series
How Does Strategic Planning Benefit Companies
Common Mistakes in Strategic Planning
How Team Dynamics Affect Strategic Planning
Video: You Aren’t Strategic Enough