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

Strategy Communication

The story of the strategy

The book contains many small case studies, anecdotes and stories. These allcome from real organizations or clients and are designed to illustrate points,bring out aspects of the technique or give you an example of how to someoneelse has tackled a situation. This theme of telling stories permeates the book. Part of the art of communicating [...]

Strategy is about influencing behaviour and managing change

If strategy is about change, and measured by results, strategic communication is measured by changes in actions and behaviours. Chapter four explores how change occurs. It describes the mindsets, motivations and typical reactions that you get when new strategies and change programmes are announced. Much of this book is about making sure the strategy is [...]

I was in a warm bed. Then I woke up in a plan

This is a line from a Woody Allan film. “I was in a warm bed.  Then I woke up in a plan”.  If the strategy is communicated badly or implemented badly, it is how it can feel to many people. Having spent a long time developing the strategy, you will be in a different place [...]

Developing communications skills as a Manager or Director

Many books suggest what you should do to solve various problems. They focus on what to do and how to do it. My experience is that such advice is often limited in its usefulness. It is not just doing things that matters; it is how you think about what you do and what you believe [...]

Engaging heads hearts and hands in your strategy

Lots of time is spent developing a strategy and planning its implementation.  Yet a simple fact remains: no matter how good the thinking behind the strategy, it is a waste of time if it is not in the heads, hearts and hands of the people who need to execute it. Of course, it is helpful [...]

Only five percent (5%) understand the strategy

This is a shocking statistic.  Some research was conducted into why many strategies seem well conceived but poorly executed. It concluded that whilst many organizations have some success with their strategy, almost nine out of ten organizations fail to fully implement their strategy as they had planned. The first figure in this research suggested that, [...]

Metaphors for the economy

How do you describe the economy to your people, customers, suppliers and shareholders?  Because how you do communicate to your staff about the economy will also communicate messages about your strategy and will communicate a host of hidden and implicit messages about your thinking.  Its an important communication skill of managers and directors to know [...]

They don’t get the strategy

“They don’t get the strategy!” These were precisely the words the chief executive used: ‘They don’t get the strategy’. This was not a small company: it was listed on the FTSE100. It was not a particularly new strategy, as they had been implementing it for around two years. It wasn’t a particularly new management team, [...]

Why I wrote the book Communicating Strategy (Part 2)

This book started as a short e-book, but soon developed into this fuller book. Its working title was ‘Heads, hearts and hands’, which reflected the strategy being in the head, as a logically correct thing to do; being in the heart, as an emotional response and engagement; and being in the hands, so it is [...]