Engaging People To Execute On Your Strategy

Last year The McKinsey Quarterly featured an article by Teresa Amabile & Steven Kramer on How Leaders Kill Meaning at Work, where it reflected on the key issue as follows

As a senior executive, you may think that Job Number 1 is developing a killer strategy. In fact, that is Job 1a. You have a second, equally important task. Call it Job 1b: enabling the ongoing engagement and everyday progress of the people in the trenches of your organisation who strive to execute that strategy. A multiyear research project found that of all the events that can deeply engage people in their jobs, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.

We argue that managers at all levels routinely - and unwittingly - undermine the meaningfulness of work for their direct subordinates through everyday words and actions. These include dismissing the importance of subordinates' work or ideas, destroying a sense of ownership by switching people off project teams before work is finalised, shifting goals so frequently that people despair that their work will ever see the light of day, and neglecting to keep subordinates up to date on changing priorities for customers. 

The multiyear research referred to is a project carried out by Amabile and Kramer in which they tracked nearly 12,000 daily electronic diaries from professionals working on important projects at seven North American companies. They then selected those entries in which diarists mentioned upper- or top-level managers (868 narratives in all) and through a process of qualitative analysis highlighted 4 'traps' that lie in wait for senior executives

1. Mediocrity signals
2. Strategic 'attention deficit disorder' 
3. Corporate Keystone Kops
4. Misbegotten 'big, hairy and audacious goals'

These traps feel familiar from the work that FranklinCovey has led into the topic of execution within 100s of organisations around the world, and in our experience the approach we recommend can help senior executives and their business units overcome each of them 

• Mediocrity signals - the authors describe this trap as one where lofty goals and high purposes voiced by strategic sponsors are contradicted by their words and actions. In our experience, this is often because those in senior positions don't distinguish sufficiently well between 'stroke of the pen' strategies (where they can initiate changes by decree - for example a new market entry, a shift in product mix or a competitor takeover) and 'behavioural change strategies' (where, to be successful, people throughout a business unit will need to think differently and work differently and where they will often look to those in positions of leadership for their cues)
• Strategic 'attention deficit disorder' - according to the authors, this trap arises when "too many managers start and abandon initiatives so frequently (that) they don't allow sufficient time to discover whether initiatives are working, and they communicate insufficient rationales to their employees when they make strategic shifts". We recently had a similar conversation with a relatively young / strongly growing organisation, and pointed out to them the underlying cause of this issue, which is that managers at higher levels of a business unit often shift too soon from defining the 'what' that needs to be done by their teams to the 'how' it needs to be done. This results in a  plethora of (often disconnected) initiatives that multiply level by level, which the organisation (and its people) cannot hope to effectively sustain.
• Corporate Keystone Cops - here, the authors describe a situation where executives think that everything is going smoothly but instead preside over their own version of the Keystone Kops, which is characterised by complex reporting structures, chronic indecisiveness, rushed analysis and chaotic conditions for workers. By contrast, the approach FranklinCovey encourages is a translation and engagement process that ensures a 'clear line of sight' between those goals established at the top of a business unit and those created down to front line teams, which means everyone has a clear point of reference for the decisions they are being asked to make. 
• Misbegotten 'big, hairy and audacious goals' - here the authors reference the 'BHAGs' advocated by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their research on companies that move from 'Good to Great', but lament that "at some companies such statements are grandiose, containing little relevance or meaning for people in the trenches. They can be so extreme to be unattainable and so vague as to seem empty". For this very reason, the engagement and translation process that FranklinCovey encourages in its work on execution ensures ratification of the proposed goals at each level by those who will be responsible for engaging their teams in the next stage communication or delivery of the goals. When it comes to the front line (or the 'trenches') we then complement this approach with a manager accreditation approach, where all front line managers are equipped with the ability to integrate into the execution process suggestions made by team members themselves as to 'how' they will deliver on the new and different goals being asked of them.