Driving Success: The Incredible Power of Team-Based Strategy and Vision Alignment

MCS Communications

 

 

Driving Success: The Incredible Power of Team-Based Strategy and Vision Alignment

 

By Charlie Sheppard

If your team is like most teams, your employees represent your biggest line item expense and your most valuable asset. This means your team’s ability to impact the company’s productivity - and ultimately, its profitability - depends on making sure all of your workers perform up to their full potential.

Despite the experience of many organizations, it is possible to turn strategies and plans into individual actions, which are necessary to produce a great business performance. But it's not easy. Many companies repeatedly fail to truly motivate their people to work with enthusiasm, all together, towards the corporate aims. Most companies and organizations know their businesses, and the strategies required for success. However many corporations - especially large ones - struggle to translate the theory into action plans that will enable the strategy to be successfully implemented and sustained. Here are some leading edge methods for effective strategic corporate implementation.

To survive in today’s marketplace, everyone must find ways to be smarter, more productive, and more cohesive. How can this be accomplished? Studies show a dramatic increase in both worker and business performance when an organization effectively sets and closely ties individual employee goals to the company’s overall strategy and a team’s overall strategy. The Cold, Hard Facts: "A mere 7%of employees today fully understand their company’s business strategies and what’s expected of them in order to help achieve company goals." Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, "The Strategy-Focused Organization," Harvard Business School Press, 2001. A Fortune Magazine study has shown that 7 out of 10 CEOs who fail, do so not because of bad strategy, but because of bad execution. In another study of Times 1000 companies, 80% of directors said they had the right strategies but only 14% thought they were implementing them well. Only 1 in 3 companies, in their own assessment, were achieving significant strategic success. The message is clear: effective strategy realization is the key for achieving strategic success. There is a strong business case to be made between using a team-based approach and execution. In a recent study, researchers found a strong correlation between a company’s financial performance and an effective goal setting process. Companies that more closely aligned goals across their organization enjoyed much higher levels of financial success. The study also found that employees in the weakest-performing companies did not clearly understand the connection between their individual efforts and the overall goals of their employers. These same people also reported feeling confused as to their roles at the company, which naturally resulted in unfocused - and therefore less productive - work activity.   Implementation is not for the meek. Your strategic plan is a beautiful twelve-meter America's Cup hull; the implementation plan is the sails and the crew. Your team won’t get very far without one or the other.  The main reason for doing a team-based strategy approach is the knowledge, context, and wisdom it creates with other members of the team.  This wisdom creates motivation for action. The problem with most vision statements and business strategies is they are handed out to the team.  The words don’t mean anything.  When the words don’t have a strong mental representation or an association, the vision fails to be either guiding or motivating.  When the words don’t link back to a mental image or a compelling story... the vision naturally falls flat and in the worst-case scenario the vision and strategy can be mocked.  How many of you have seen a printed vision or business strategy and ridiculed it in your own mind? Strategies and vision are not reality themselves, only representations of reality in the minds of people.  The better the words have representations in the minds of the team, the better the execution will be. No one has ever touched or seen a vision or a strategy. This means that every vision and strategy can have a misrepresenting or distorting effect.  Your job is to make sure the words have a compelling meaning. The main role of both a vision and strategy is to chart the course of an organization in order for it to sail cohesively through its environment. Strategy promotes coordination of activity. Without strategy to focus effort, chaos can ensue as people pull in a variety of different directions. Your vision and strategy defines your organization and focuses effort. Strategy provides people with a shorthand way to understand their organization and to distinguish it from others. Strategy provides meaning, plus a convenient way to comprehend what the organization does. Strategy is needed to reduce ambiguity and provide order. In this sense, a strategy is like a theory: a cognitive structure to simplify and explain the world, and thereby facilitate action. And yet, strategic direction has an inherent set of limitations as it can serve as a set of blinders to hide potential dangers. Setting out on a predetermined course in unknown waters is the perfect way to sail into an iceberg. While direction is important, it should come from a thorough understanding of the current situation and the realization that the landscape is changing frequently. If the strategy is inflexible, there may be no peripheral vision to open other possibilities. We function best when we can take some things for granted, at least for a time. And a thorough understanding of where you are, where you are going and how you are going, to get there resolves the big issues so that people can get on with the details. If there is one thing that keeps a business strategy from doing its job, it is a lack of leadership. And not just from leadership at the top. There have to be good leaders at all levels of the organization. When you have a team of motivated people, you unlock the full potential of a team. That doesn’t vary for any kind of strategy. A team-based approach is the way to develop leaders throughout your team to help drive implementation. The beauty of a team-based strategic plan is that it comes fully loaded with individual contribution, buy-in, and ownership! Add to this the fact that the ideas behind the plan are understood and you will have both high relevance and accuracy for your organization. The second thing that’s extremely important is accountability. Accountability has to rest on someone who can fix a problem, and people have to meet their objectives.   These findings underscore the critical importance of effectively setting and closely aligning employee and business goals to drive the success of your company. Harness the winds of change   Change comes hard to a company's culture. When change is necessary, the leaders often find a hard struggle ahead because employees fight back in covert and even openly devious ways, thus slowing the progress. A culture resistant to change is one of the major stumbling blocks in implementing a new strategic initiative, vision or structure. Entrenched behaviors undermine any new structure from the beginning, robbing it of vital momentum and ensuring that implementation will fail.  When the winds of change get moving faster and faster even a grain of sand will have an impact when whipped up to maximum velocity.  Again, the way to harness the change is by having a team-based planning session to chart the course together. The top four business benefits of using a Team-Based Approach Increased operating margins Quicker execution of strategy Inspired performance Effective internal communications The top four dangers of using a Team-Based Approach Decisions are long, drawn out, and painful Each person has a different agenda of what strategy, vision, and goal alignment means Lots of talk and little action Personal agendas being driven inside of the process We propose that the best way to successfully implement a strategy is to have a team-based approach to the development of the strategy. You can use the following ideas to help you build your own team-based approach. Our Team-Based Strategy Development is a process that will assist an organization in using the collective wisdom of its employees in the development of a strategy. This process creates alignment and dedication to the strategy as it is being developed. Team-based strategic planning is intricate and complex. There are pitfalls along the way. But nothing works better in getting full alignment for a strategy and inspired implementation of the strategy. We recommend using a facilitator so that each team member can be free to fully express their ideas with out having to attend to the process. Use the following map of how to get the most by aligning your team and aligning your goals. Step 1: Present State Analysis. Do a SWOT analysis (Strengths Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats), do a PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Sociological, and Technical), use Porter Five forces, (The threat of the entry of new competitors, The intensity of competitive rivalry, The threat of substitute products or services, The bargaining power of customers, The bargaining power of suppliers) and/or list out your strategic issues. The idea with step one is to get a complete analysis of the present situation in the mindset of the group doing the strategy.  You are creating a collective insight into the present situation for the whole team. Step 2:  Create a vision.  The more compelling your vision is, the greater the impact it will have.  A Vision is a visual image of the Future.  It is the task of the group to "discern" this vision, to give it form, and to find the associated words to communicate it. The good news is that by creating it together, the words will have an association for all team members. The vision should point out the unique personality of your function and or team. It will be forward-looking and connotes an ideal state.  It can be bold, attractive, and it may not be fully achievable. It should give insight into what the organization ideally wants to achieve. You should be able to derive business goals from an understanding of the vision of where you want to go.  It is the desired state in contrast to the present state captured in Step 1. Step 3: Create a strategy.  The strategy starts to set the themes of how you are going to get from Step 1 to Step 2.  These are the means by which you are going to accomplish what you set out as your goals.  You can look at product strategies, marketing strategies, development strategies, financial strategies, and service strategies.   You can create a broad level strategy.  The strategy statement should include the business themes for your business unit, the themes for your internal focus, and strategic fixes that need to be addressed.  The strategy issues affect the department’s long-term contribution to profitability and the corporation’s competitive edge. We break strategy down into two areas -- the Strategic Focus and the Strategic Objectives. Step 4: Strategic Focus Areas. Identify your two to five critical success factors.  Strategic Focus Areas are those broad categories where you must excel if you are to succeed with your internal or external customers. These are the statements that define the main activities the organization should focus on in order to achieve its vision.  They describe what the organization will focus on.  They are formulated to cover operational areas: Finance, Environment, Market, Human Resources, Organizational Culture and Climate, Product service and quality, Research and development. Step 5: Strategic Objectives. These are the quantitative expression of the Strategic Focus Areas.  For each strategic focus area define at a minimum one strategic objective.  The Strategic Focus areas are the broad categories that the strategic objectives start to define. The objectives should describe what the organization wants to achieve.  They are realistic.  It should be possible to derive action plans around them. They should be objectives that the organization can, for the most part, control.  The objectives are quantitatively formulated in such a way that it is possible to know if they have been achieved.  They will provide the milestones with which to track your progress towards fulfillment of the defined Strategic Focus Areas. Step 6: Action Plans. Develop your key programs and action plans. Action plans breathe life into strategy. What are the key programs that will allow your strategies to exist? List out your operational details that require action over the next 12-month period of time. Define what you are going to do, by whom and by when. What will it cost and what are the human resources necessary to accomplish the key program? These issues are critical to achieving financial and operating results for the coming year. Often, the Strategic Focus Areas, the Strategic Objectives and the Action Plans lines can get blurred in a strategic plan. As the lines between strategy and tactic get blurred, remember to not let the distinction of what you want to do or to work on get in the way of capturing the information. Placing the information in the "right box" is not as important as getting the information on paper. As time goes on, this becomes a living document, not something that is fixed in stone. Apply the following rule - "Even if our words aren't perfect, have we captured the intention of what we are trying to create?" If you can answer "yes" to this question, your strategy process will be a success and you will be able to implement and refine the document over time. Step 7: Operating Principles. Implementing a strategic plan throughout a team isn't all clear sailing. Old teams, and particularly new ones, have some predictable patterns - all derived from impatience, conflicting job demands, and the unsettling nature of a new environment. Many do not want to invest the time necessary for a team to outperform an individual. And yet, with a few agreed upon operating principles, you can alleviate much of the stress found in worrying as a team. Address the following questions to help provide a structure for interacting with each other. How are we going to interact as a team? What are the principles that are going to guide our behavior? The guidelines generated by answering these two questions will accelerate team performance so that you will have a fast start in your marketplace. Turning Strategy into execution will not happen without the people being an enthusiastic part of the effort. Easy to say; another thing entirely to make happen.  Every single person must know what they are doing, why they are doing it, and above all, must be fully committed to doing what they are doing.  If your methods enable every single person to know what they are doing, and why, and to be emotionally committed to it, then your process of turning your strategy into effective execution is probably working. The best strategies are ones not just developed by the leadership of an organization but strategies built by including everyone. Everyone is playing a dual role in developing the strategy. As a team you are collectively discussing reviewing, prioritizing and defining the strategy. As an individual you are also delivering a functional role in the implementation of the strategy.

 

 

Clear visions, combined with the right strategy, produce outstanding results.
MCS's Team-Based Strategy Development process can help your team create and execute on your strategic vision.

- Improve coordination of activities

- Focus common efforts

- Align action

- Accelerate growth

- Create a clear direction

- Allocate and leverage resources

Call 415-482-1100 or email MCS to talk further about our Strategy and Vision Development services

Terry Lee, Account Management: terry@mcscllc.com
Charlie Sheppard, Consultant: charlie@mcscllc.com
Mary Boren, Consultant: mary@mcscllc.com
Zemo Travathan, Consultant: zemo@mcscllc.com
Art Giser, Consultant: art@mcscllc.com
Mark Fourman, Consultant: mark@mcscllc.com
Jim Peal, Consultant: jim@mcscllc.com

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.