What Leaders Get Wrong About Strategy

Sometimes, leaders forget the most essential part of strategy. It’s not creating it, per se; it’s 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 the related priorities and deadlines that affect the team members under your command.

Communication, consultation, and connection—what I refer to as the three C’s of strategy—are crucial to aligning your team members to the organization’s strategy.

The first “C” is communication. Leaders must occasionally update team members on the organization’s execution of its strategy. Communicating ensures that the strategy is understood and not ignored or misinterpreted.

However, you must also find ways to consult with them about the strategy’s success or impediments related to their specific job functions. Consult is the second “C.” This information is vital to enhancing or revising the strategy itself and acts as an important feedback loop up the chain.

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

Global Strategy Insights

Global research conducted for my latest book, Work-Life Bloom, suggests that leaders and organizations are in a ‘hit-and-miss’ situation regarding strategy and its effectiveness with team members.

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

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

Another pattern emerges when the data gets cut by the four predominant generations in the workforce.

Although the age difference isn’t significant, younger individuals tend to view the organization’s strategy as clear. In contrast, older team members are less likely to feel that the organization’s strategy assists them.

Specifically, 53% of Gen Z indicate that their organization’s strategy makes performing in their roles more manageable. That’s the high-water mark. Unfortunately, it begins to erode as people age.

50% of Millennials feel the same, dropping to only 44% for Gen X and 43% for Boomers.

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

What can leaders do to help shift the success of their strategy? As mentioned, I call them the Three C’s of Strategy: Communicate, Consult, and Connect.

Communicate the Strategy

Communicating the strategy and objectives should not be a one-time or once-a-year tactic. Far too often, however, an organization’s strategy gets rolled out at the beginning of the operating year, never to be discussed again. Is that immersive? Will an employee deeply absorb the strategy if it’s only mentioned in passing once a year?

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

However, if you want team members to fully understand and appreciate your strategy, you must use an immersive communication strategy. Put simply, you must find opportunities to communicate and relate the strategy as frequently as possible with your team members.

Consult on the 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’s heading, why, and by how much— would it not be a good idea to consult with those individuals who are enacting the strategy occasionally?

If leaders announce the strategy and team members execute it, it’s likely an excellent idea to intermittently check in with people to see how it is actually playing out. That action can create a strategic bond.

Implementation of the organization’s strategy relies heavily on your team members. Yet, few employees get involved in the strategic planning process.

Not only do you miss out on critical feedback that could help reshape future versions of the strategy, but it also negates the chance to reinforce any context between the employee, their performance, and the strategy.

Again, it’s perhaps another reason why two-thirds of team members not in leadership roles don’t believe their organization’s strategy makes it easier for them to perform in their roles.

Connect to the Strategy

It’s pretty simple: your role as a leader is to connect the organization’s strategy to your team members’ roles and objectives as often as it makes sense. By making this connection, you provide an essential perspective for the individual.

What good is it to a team member if an organization’s strategy only sits on a website or an annual report PDF document? It’s not.

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

One fool proof way to prevent that from happening is to rely on the ‘hopes and prayers’ approach. You can’t hope that the team member will make that connection. How should you connect to the strategy? There is one specific way that makes the most sense.

Your one-on-one meetings with each team member can efficiently act as the mechanism for you to connect their role to the strategy.

Not every one-on-one meeting requires this to happen, but ignoring it outright is not advised either. Moreover, it’s not a hard leadership lift.

Think about employing open-ended questions. Start a dialogue with the team member by asking how they think their role has recently contributed to the organization’s strategy. From there, you can infuse the conversation with your leadership insights on what else they are doing to help achieve the strategy. Conducting this two to three times a year for 10 to 15 minutes is all it takes.

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

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

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Dan Pontefract.

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Dan Pontefract is a leadership strategist and award-winning author with over two decades of experience in enhancing organizational performance and culture. Based in Canada, he has been a Forbes contributor since 2015, covering leadership, workplace culture, and employee experience. Read More