From strategy to reality

Change / 09 November 2011

Having a shiny new business strategy is pointless if you can’t disseminate the plan to the teams who will be implementing it. Karen Higginbottom explores how to get everyone on board and inspired to create change

You're a manager and you've just received an email from your chief executive informing you that the organisation has a new strategy. The trouble is, you haven't a clue what this actually means for your department. Sound familiar? The problem often lies with the word 'strategy' itself, which can be viewed as an elaborate plan devised by a select few at the top of an organisation, a plan that has no relevance for the managers on the front line who have to implement it.

There are many definitions of corporate strategy floating around out there in the business world. Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes, in their book Exploring corporate strategy, describe it as follows: "Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long term, which achieves advantage for the organisation through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment, to meet the needs of markets and fulfil stakeholder expectations."

Strategy can outline areas such as where the business is going in the long term, what markets it should be competing in, and how it can outperform the competition in those markets. And let's not forget the resources such as skills, technical competence, assets and facilities that are required to compete in a sector, and the impact that external factors can have on an organisation's ability to compete.

People often talk about strategy when they mean tactical action, says Mike Robinson, director at specialist management advisers Berkshire Consultancy. "Strategy is often used to cover terms such as initiatives. Broadly, a plan is still cascaded down from the top, but what is becoming more common is a recognition that if you want a strategy to be more successful, then you must engage all your staff."

Within organisations, strategy is often polarised around two areas, believes Michael Weaver, programme director at business and performance consultancy DPA, whose clients include Superdrug and Scottish Life. "It's polarised around capability-driven process where it's all about methodology. They say it's strategy, but really it's a complex planning process and not about creating value in an organisation," he argues. "The other area that strategy focuses on is capacity. Lots of organisations talk about vision and values but these often lack substance and don't feel tangible or relevant to the day-to-day operation of the business."

Either approach on its own will only get you so far, says Weaver. "What you need to do is harness the power of both. You need strategic capability and capacity to ensure a successful strategy."

If organisations want to be strategically successful, they need to translate that into values for different levels of the company, advises Weaver. He recommends that the strategy is summarised.
"We use maps that put it into the simplest terms possible and explain why an organisation needs to change its strategy. It's usually a big idea that managers can immediately identify with and relate to their part of the work. We come up with a sentence that summarises what we want to do. The map is like a storyboard that presents the rationale for why an organisation needs to follow the strategy and how it will be taken forward in
an organisation."

A question of control

Strategy can fail to fully penetrate staff consciousness as it may feel imposed on middle managers, says Weaver. "They feel they have no ownership or control of it. People naturally question that process
and want to understand where the strategy has come from – and that is a challenge."

You can’t expect people to take ownership of something they’ve had no input in creating.

Cris Beswick, author and speaker on strategy

Cris Beswick, an author and speaker on strategy, leadership and innovation, argues that the best way to turn high-level strategy into reality is to create two versions. "Chief executives are strategic thinkers by nature, that's why they are in those positions. In contrast, employees are implementers and doers, so it's imperative to align both perspectives. My approach is to get the CEO and senior team to create the high-level strategy, forming the main strategic direction and core pillars by which the organisation will drive growth. Then, using the core pillars as a guide, a second strategy should be co-created with every employee. Company-wide engagement is crucial, as is the co-creation element."

Beswick believes that the employee strategy forms the basis for implementation of the core strategy at staff level. "It's only by doing this that employees can relate the high-level strategic moves to their everyday work. We can't expect people to take ownership of something they've had no input in creating or building. Without co-creation, organisations just have dictation and fait accompli. That isn't engagement and doesn't help build a high-performing team."

Managers need to involve their team in creating their own priorities for an organisation's strategy, advises Weaver. "The leaders in the organisation are setting the strategy but you must engage senior managers to help define how you make that happen. Engagement is at its best when it's a learning process. To practice this means working together to understand the rationale and reasoning (the 'why?') that has led to strategic goals, objectives or capabilities (the 'what?'). This can then be channelled into group discussions about how teams are going to implement them locally (the 'how?'). This can only be done face-to-face and I think it works best when teams can do it for themselves without too much outside involvement."

One of the major problems within organisations is that middle managers are often regarded as conduits for a strategy rather than active translators of it, says Professor Julia Balogun, director of the graduate management school and the centre for strategic management at Lancaster University Management School. "Senior managers have to actively work with middle managers to ensure they understand what the strategy is about and what the implications are for their teams. They need to get their employees to buy into the organisation's change agenda and know how to present that agenda so that they understand it and link it to their own objectives."

Talking the language

More complex strategies need to be fed to staff in bite-sized chunks, says Robinson. "They need to know what it means for their team, and the strategy must be communicated to them in a medium they can relate to. Use of analogy or metaphor may help as often itÕs the behavioural change that is more difficult to secure than intellectual buy-in."

Of course, the Achilles heel of any implementation strategy is often communication. This is where many strategies fail to get off the ground, says Professor George Tovstiga, professor of strategy and innovation management at Henley Business School.

"Organisations don't understand the importance of shared buy-in and getting people on board. Employees need to know how it's going to affect them and when the milestones will happen. They want to have a sense of being informed. It's almost a case of over-communicating. The person who devised the strategy should be in control of what gets communicated and what gets sent out."