What leaders get wrong about strategy

Sometimes leaders forget the most important part of strategy. He does not create it as such; this is what comes next.

Your job as a leader is to improve the alignment between the organization’s current state and its intended strategy. It includes relevant priorities and deadlines that impact the team members under your command.

Communication, consultation, and connections—what I call the three Cs of strategy—are critical to aligning your team members with the organization’s strategy.

First letter “C” communication. Leaders must periodically update team members on the organization’s execution of its strategy. Communication ensures that the strategy is understood and not ignored or misinterpreted.

However, you should also find ways to consult with them about the success of the strategy or obstacles related to their specific job functions. Consult this is the second letter “S”. This information is vital to improving or revising the strategy itself and acts as an important feedback loop throughout the chain.

Finally, another requirement is to make the strategy real. The third “C” is unite the points between your organization’s strategy and how it impacts the current tasks and roles of team members.

Global strategy

Global research conducted for my latest book, Work-life Bloomsuggests that leaders and organizations are in a difficult situation regarding strategy and its effectiveness for team members.

Collectively, 69% of employees at all levels believe their organization has a clear strategy. This percentage is higher for leaders (74%) than for non-leaders (59%). Unfortunately, only 47% of global employees believe their employer’s strategy helps them perform their jobs.

In other words, about half of employees do not positively connect their work to their organization’s strategy.

Another pattern emerges when the data is collapsed across the four dominant generations of the workforce.

Although the age difference is small, young people tend to perceive the organization’s strategy as clear. In contrast, senior team members are less likely to feel that the organization’s strategy is helping them.

Specifically, 53% of Gen Zers indicate that their organization’s strategy makes their roles more manageable. This is the highest point. Unfortunately, with age it begins to deteriorate.

50% of Millennials feel the same, while that figure drops to 44% for Gen X and 43% for Boomers.

This raises an interesting question: Does an organization want its most senior and experienced employees to become increasingly disillusioned with its strategy as they age? Likewise, don’t we want the performance of our experienced team members to be high and thus intertwined with the organization’s strategy?

What can leaders do to make their strategy successful? As mentioned, I call them the “Three Cs of Strategy”: communicate, consult, and connect.

Communicate the strategy

Disseminating strategy and goals should not be a one-time or annual event. However, too often an organization’s strategy is implemented at the beginning of the operating year and is never discussed again. Is it exciting? Will an employee deeply internalize a strategy if it is only mentioned in passing once a year?

The answers to these questions are, of course, no.

However, if you want team members to fully understand and appreciate your strategy, you need to use an immersive communication strategy. Simply put, you should find opportunities to communicate and discuss strategy with your team members as often as possible.

Consult on strategy

If we agree that a good organizational strategy acts as a guide for all team members – a path that shows everyone in the company where it is going, why and by how much – it would not be a good idea to consult with those people who apply it from time to time strategy?

If leaders are announcing a strategy and team members are implementing it, it’s probably a good idea to check in with people from time to time and see how it’s actually being implemented. This action can create a strategic connection.

Executing an organization’s strategy largely depends on your team members. However, few employees are involved in the strategic planning process.

Not only are you missing out on critical feedback that could help shape future iterations of the strategy, but you’re also negating the opportunity to reinforce any context between the employee, their performance, and the strategy.

Then again, this may be another reason why two-thirds of non-managerial team members don’t believe their organization’s strategy makes it easier for them to do their jobs.

Connect to the strategy

It’s quite simple: your role as a leader is to connect the organization’s strategy to the roles and goals of your team members as often as makes sense. By making this connection, you provide the person with an important perspective.

What benefit does it serve a team member if the organization’s strategy is only posted on a website or in an annual report PDF document? It’s not.

Team members must feel the strategy is relevant to them. They should feel connected to it.

One surefire way to prevent this is to rely on a “hope and prayer” approach. You can’t rely on a team member to make that connection. How to connect to the strategy? There is one particular way that makes the most sense.

Your one-on-one meetings with each team member can effectively serve as a mechanism to connect their role to the strategy.

Not every one-on-one meeting requires this, but it’s not recommended to completely ignore it. Moreover, this is not a tough leadership elevator.

Consider using open-ended questions. Start a dialogue with a team member by asking how they think their role has recently contributed to the organization’s strategy. From there, you can enrich the conversation with management’s views on what else they are doing to achieve the strategy. It is enough to do this two or three times a year for 10-15 minutes.

When the three C’s of strategy are put into action, the end result is a team member with a better understanding of the big picture.

When team members understand and accept your organization’s short-term and long-term goals, it leads to strategic alignment. Moreover, when they are aligned with the strategy, their performance usually improves.