Communicating Strategy: The Book, Blog, Techniques, to engage your staff

Strategy Communication

Communication during acquisition

Having recently being involved in the due diligence phase of an acquisition process, it was interesting to think through the communication from the seller’s perspective and the perspective of the people employed in the plant that were were trying to acquire. This particular plant (I cannot give any details) was a subsidiary that the selling [...]

Communicating your strategy more effectively, Part 5: Communicating through your actions

Communication through actions So you have told the story of the strategy, but do you back it up with actions. Do your actions also communicate the strategy? Take three examples: 1) I want to encourage excellent customer service. I measure the time with a customer and set targets to minimise it so you speak to [...]

Communicating your strategy effectively, Part 4: Communicating the journey

Communicating the “how?”  Communicating the journey. We know where we want to go, quite clearly and tangibly.  We know why we want to go there.  But how do we get there?  How do we make the journey?  How do we communicate we mean business with this strategy? To explain the journey, the most effective way [...]

Communicating your strategy effectively: Part 3 – communicating the “why”

Communicating the “why?” It is vital you communicate the “why” of your strategy, otherwise your people will not engage with either your strategy or your message. There are two “Why”s to communicate: The “Sense of purpose?” and the “Why change?”. The first “Why” is about what is important to people. Rather than a mission statement, [...]

Will 35% of your staff leave, come the end of the crisis?

This weekend I was at a seminar organised by the entrepreneur coaching company that James Caan has set up.  One of the presenters Nic Rixon, quoted the following statistic: “When the turn comes, 35% of staff will leave ” Now if this is true its a frightening statistic.  But what does it mean? One view [...]

Telling the story of your strategy

As you stand in front of your team about to tell the story of your strategy, you want to be sure that the message gets across.  That is the essence of “Communicating Strategy”.  You want to have through through how you construct and tell the story of your strategy so it comes to life. I [...]

Lord Young tells some truths at the wrong time

When is a 25% cut an increase?  In the case of the public sector custs, when you want to communicate your strategy, create an imperative for change and protect your reputation.  Let me explain. I feel a little sorry for Lord Young.  He has been lambasted in the press for saying “You never had it [...]

Is that Dolland and Aitchison, Boots the Opticians, or someone else?

This is a classic story of confusing your customers and mis-communicating your strategy and actions…. I wanted an eye test and some new glasses, so I called Dolland and Aitchison, (D&A) the opticians. My wife uses them a lot. They have a good reputation and I have been there before. Now it seems that D&A [...]

Communicating finance in the public sector

Just at the moment, one of the most difficult places to be must be in finance in the public sector. They are constantly re-doing budgets and subject to negotiations over custs to funding from central government. That is if the organisation still exists: if you are a quango, there is a fair chance you are [...]

Be professional! How a simple wording change can make a big difference.

Working with a Chief Executive last year, he was frustrated that his staff were not following basic practices of timesheets, project reporting and being disciplined. It was hard to get consistent information from them on the various IT projects that were running. Now it was not as if they were inexperienced staff. They were not. [...]

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