Strategic choices: involving people in strategy development

Madi Radulescu, MBA, ACC

Managing Partner MMM Consulting International

(www.mmmconsulting.ro)

Spring. Time for choices. Time to strategize next year because, if you don’t do it now, in autumn, it will be far too late. Why? Let me tell you a story…I work with companies, with top management teams assisting them in developing alternative strategies in reaching their objectives. This is something happening every couple of years and, a group of bright and very well prepared, experienced managers get together to brainstorm, discuss, adjust and decide on their best strategies to stay successful and win over their competition.

Many times, the beautiful strategies fail in implementation, either middle management seems to stay too operational or the employees, somehow, do not bring enough level of engagement to make strategies alive. At least, this is what I mostly hear as complaints.

The standard practice is for executives to decide the direction and strategic goals of the company. Most often, these decisions are never communicated to the rest of the organization, or, they’re communicated in a piecemeal fashion through middle managers. This often results in employees simply going about their day and doing their jobs with no real context for how it fits into the big vision for the company.

One of the biggest concerns I hear from business leaders is that their people fail to implement quickly enough. They complain that too much time is spent planning, when most of success is implementation. When leaders attempt to make sense of this, they often assume that employees don’t want to stand out. I think, they’re missing the problem entirely. The failure is in the strategic planning process itself. Senior leaders spend copious amounts of time creating the strategic plan, often in isolation.

Two years ago I started to work with a company and their CEO asked me to design a series of workshops in order to generate the strategic alternative together with key people from this division. We brought in over 40 people to generate ideas and solutions that, later on, will skip the “buy – in” difficult process because they’ve been part of it. 40 people seems to be a lot more that the key people group but it was the critical mass in making sure they will continue to talk about “the great experience” and spread the word about it. We had as many as seven workshops like this. Every single step, carefully designed, carefully crafted to add one more brick to this construction that not only generated beautiful business ideas and projects but created a sense of belongingness and common objective that can be rarely seen among companies nowadays.

What we have learned out of this experience compared to the other ones (we do not judge the quality of the output, we simply look to the process of generating it):

– In the first instance the strategy is foisted upon employees, who are then tasked with implementing it — without understanding the nuances and debates that went into its creation.

– It’s natural that when the implementers hit an important point, they have a hard time moving forward because they’re missing crucial information, not being exposed to the alternatives discussed and discarded. They don’t have the “whys”. And, this delay results in a loss of time, money, and opportunity.

Taking the story of involving quite a lot of people in the process, the “owner”, come together to discuss the project, the CEO acts as an architect that offer his expertise on the most effective ways to achieve the goal. When the implementers of strategy are part of the process, they cannot only add perspective to the plan, but they are also immersed in its tradeoffs and nuances. When the unexpected arises — and it always does — implementers can make course corrections quickly and powerfully.

There are few other learning points to take out of this:

– Let passion drive strategy. Employees should be included throughout the strategy development process, and there’s plenty of space to engage everyone in the company at an appropriate level. For a better outcome, take input from frontline employees, and see how can this be included in srahing best practices processes and included in the strategies to maintaining competitiveness.

– Make sure your employees are enthusiastic about improving the company is essential. Doing this requires transparency, trust, and mutual respect. Too often, senior teams retreat to offsite resorts to develop strategy, only to return and force it upon the rest of the company. Give employees the opportunity to find something they can fall in love with by engaging them in the process. Give them the opportunity to test the “process of birth” and, like any “mother”, they will be in love with their kid.

– Talk with your team. Share and discuss the industry, competitive environment, relationships, and customer characteristics that drive your business with every department in your team. Be honest about company performance, challenges, and wins. Welcome genuine input and tough questions.

Well… involving everyone in planning can be a challenge as departments and teams get bigger. And you certainly can’t shut down the company to ensure everyone participates.

A potential solution to this challenge is to include different people, teams or departments in the process each quarter. While it means that not every voice will be heard every time, it guarantees that all will be able to contribute throughout the year. And you can build it step by step, taking time to discuss, understand blockages people may see and you do not, becoming more aware about the resources they may ask for or relationships they need to develop in order to make the strategy alive.

Remember that strategy is not only a nice plan to present to the Headquarter is something that will be translated in day-to-day objectives and people need to prve their peformance againts it. Is too expensive for a company event or for key people retreats to involve them in the exercise? Then, consider how expensive would not reaching the pace of imlementing the beautful startegy you’ve been able to develop with the small tem of top managers.

Participating in the development of the “Big Vision” and the “winning strategy” goes a long way to ensuring everyone is on the same page. The next piece of the puzzle is to connect the individual to that vision through performance metrics. The key here is to keep the vision or goals in mind and ensure the employee’s performance is being measured against how it fits into accomplishing those goals. That means: making it alive!

To tell you the end of the story? The Business Unit I was telling about was not only generating few great strategic alternatives. They were able to strat in a month period four projects that generated income, gain clients and most importantly, created such a sense of team and success that, every time I go back there I have a great sense of belongingness. Is part of my work, my professional life and I feel connected. And, consider that, as a consultant, I come and go. So, multiply by… whatever positive number you may choose, the engagement you may sense there. For me is a life lesson!

Managing Partner and founder MMM Consulting Intl (www.mmmconsulting.ro), Madi Radulescu has over 20 years of entrepreneurship, training and consulting experience. She worked in 9 European markets with participants from 14 countries mainly at top management and Board member level, in management development programs, workshops, team facilitation processes, performance management and strategy.

MBA at the Warwick University UK, DPM OU UK, MSc. Engineering; ACC – ICF Executive Coach.

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