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ORGANIZATIONAL AND PERSONAL CONGRUENCE

ORGANIZATIONAL AND PERSONAL CONGRUENCE

When we listen to presenters or politicians, we instinctively notice how congruent they are. We may think, ‘That person is lying or does not believe what they have just said’. In some cases they may say one thing at one time and something different at another time. In some cases what they say may not align with what they do. Chapters eight and nine address this question of congruence, not just for individuals but for the management team and the whole organization.

What applies to individuals also applies to the whole management team. If the management team leave the boardroom with different stories, then it will quickly become apparent to the rest of the organization. So chapter eight describes what can go wrong and helps you address the congruence of the management team before the message gets out. That way the message is consistent and aligned.

This congruence also applies to the whole organization. This is not just about the people telling the story. Are you about to communicate a strategy, only to be undermined by the very organization in which it will operate? In ‘The handcuffed organization’, chapter nine provides ways you can check the coherence and integrity of the  whole of the organization’s message. It provides a checklist of organizational processes, systems and cultural
components that you can use to ensure the message is not undermined.

Finally, chapter ten will bring all these pieces together by providing a plan for developing your communication strategy and a contents list for that communication strategy document.

Phil Jones
Author, Communicating Stratgey

The story of the strategy

The book contains many small case studies, anecdotes and stories. These all
come 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 someone
else has tackled a situation. This theme of telling stories permeates the book.

Part of the art of communicating your strategy is telling its story. Story telling
is an art that transcends cultures. Chapter six explains how to develop the
story of your strategy so it is complete. Chapter seven provides techniques to
tell the story more effectively  and to socialise the strategy.

Chapter six concentrates on the content of the story of the strategy. What is
the strategy and what are the aspects of it that will need to be told? How can
we tell these various aspects in a coherent way? The quality of the thinking
within the strategy will strongly influence the telling of it.

Chapter seven addresses the telling of the story of the strategy. It explores ways
in which you can get your message across more effectively; how to engage
people, pacing them and communicating the message, so it engages the many
different ways in which people think about things. It also provides ways to
prevent you stifling feedback through the accidental messages you might
send out. It tells you how to be more systematic about gathering feedback and
getting people to participate in the strategy, because listening sensitively to
this feedback enables you to refine the message and its communication. 

Important communication skills to develop as a manager or director in an organisation.

Phil Jones, Author, Communicating Strategy

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 communicated so people understand and are engaged with it. However, there is also aspect to communication that is no nonsense discipline. At some point, when people are not complying, you will have to get serious and potentially get rid of people. This chapter also explores some of the aspects of communication
that go behind the message to show you are serious. This is ‘The discipline of change’.

Chapter five considers ‘What is in it for me?’ from the perspective of the various players. You can explore ‘what’s in it for them?’ from different people’s perspectives so you can build an even richer understanding of the various players involved.

Phil Jones
Author

Communicating Strategy

‘I WAS IN A WARM BED, THEN I WOKE UP IN A PLAN’

‘I WAS IN A WARM BED, THEN I WOKE UP IN A PLAN’

This is a line in a Woody Allan movie. 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 from those not involved. Just think: you may have spent several monthsof detailed work analysing the problems, gathering facts, exploring ideas and developing the solution. Your head has moved on from where you were several months ago. However, others have not been involved. They may know something is going on, but will not know what it is.

Part of the challenge you face as a Manager or Director is to get yourself back to the situation where you started and look at where you are now, as if you were still there.  To devbelop teh communication skills to get this message across effectively and engage your staff.

Throughout this book you will be asked to consider the situation and look at the strategy from the perspective of others. This is a skill that some people take time to build. It is one thing to say, ‘I would not do that in their shoes’.

You are not them. You are not in their shoes. There is a Native American saying, ‘Judge not someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes’. To walk in their shoes, you have to ask the question, ‘How would I think if
I were them?’.

Alternatively, ask ‘What would I have to know or believe to act like that?’. Chapters three, four and five will help you develop these skills and, through these, a more effective communication style.

Phil Jones, Author, Communicating Strategy

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 about what you do.

These often have a far greater influence on success.

This book aims to give you tools to make decisions for yourself. It does not
try to say ‘If you do all these things, you will successfully communicate your
strategy’. What it sets out to give you is the underlying thinking, tools and
techniques that you can choose from. More importantly, it provides advice on
when to use those tools and how best to use them.

It is said that bad workers blame their tools. Likewise, an unthinking manager
uses tools just because they are there. That is the route to fad management.
Please do not go down this route.

This book aims to help you develop the thinking behind good
communication of strategy. It aims to help you develop your judgement as to
how best to communicate in a particular situation.

How you communicate your strategy will depend upon your personality, your
thinking styles and your motivations. One purpose of this book, particularly
in chapters two and three, is to help you to realize the impact of your way
of thinking and your preferences. This does not just apply to individuals.
Organizations, too, have personalities, thinking styles and motivations. These
personal and organizational preferences will also influence how you will tend
to prefer to communicate your strategy. This clash of preferences between
individuals or between individuals and the organizational character often lies
at the root of poor communication. Understanding it will help you address it,
before you make mistakes.

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 to have it available for reference on the shelf or in the computer, and to keep the auditors happy.

If that is where it stays, it is a waste of paper, and it has been a waste of management time and effort.   You might as well burn all the plans if they are not in people's heads.

This book is about communicating that strategy, getting that engagement and getting feedback from it. As you read through this book and think about the questions it raises, the suggestions it makes, and the examples it uses, you will see how it is designed to help you get the strategy into the heads of your people and develop that engagement.

The book is designed to help you build skills, think through the issues, and develop a plan for communicating your strategy. Of course, that plan should be in your head, which is why it is not formalized until the end of the book. By the time you reach it you will have developed lots of ideas and have started putting them into action.

A wide range of experiences in a wide variety of sizes and types of organization has gone into this book. These organizations range from large commercial and multi national companies to small family run businesses, from large public sector bodies to city councils, from dot.coms, through traditional manufacturing companies to pure service organizations. You can apply the ideas and experience in this book to them all.

At a minimum, the strategy must address the simple logic of ‘Where are we going and how are we going to get there?’. It will engage the heads of your staff. But that is not enough. It is also about getting to the hearts of your people. Whilst the cold logic of Star Trek’s Mr Spock is useful, it is the emotional commitment and engagement that often makes the biggest difference. The passion with which people engage customers or commit to activities makes a massive difference to people’s productivity and results. It also makes a big difference to how people feel about being at work and how the organization’s community and society plays in their lives. This passion and commitment will come from the passion and commitment you have when you communicate the strategy.

It is also about getting it into the hands of people, so actions are taken. Many strategies have had compelling logic and been passionately delivered, but have still failed in their execution. Sometimes the organization itself acts to stop change happening. Sometimes people need a compelling wake up call. Sometimes, people simply need to know that they have permission to act differently and no longer be constrained by the rules that bound them. So, whilst this book is about communicating your strategy in an organization, it is applicable to communicating all sorts of changes in an organization, its culture and its values.

Phil Jones, Author, Communicating Strategy

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, of all the staff in the organizations involved, only five per cent of them understood the strategy. A different and more recent survey suggested that this figure was around eight per cent. I suspect the difference is not significant.

This limited understanding of strategy amongst its staff is an important issue for an organization. Even if the figures were out by a factor of ten, that means only half know what you are trying to achieve. If only one person in 20 understands your strategy (and presumably that one is executing the strategy) what opportunity are you missing with the other 19? It also raises the question, ‘Whose strategies are the other 19 executing?’.

It is not just a question of communication. It is also a question of trust. In a 2005 survey of 1,100 employees by Mercer Human Resource Consulting in the UK, just 36 per cent of workers trusted management ‘to always communicate honestly’. A similar survey of 800 US employees found that 40 per cent of respondents felt the same.

I suspect these figures also reflect different populations within the organization, and would vary with different levels of management and employee. Nonetheless, if you truly believe that your employees are a critical asset and fundamental to your success, can you afford to have so few of them trusting, understanding and helping you to implement your strategy?

This is why I believe this skill of communicating strategy, and socialising strategy, is so vital for Managers and Directors in all types of organisation, public sector and commercial.

Phil Jones
Author, Communicating Strategy

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 what they are communicating and how it is received.

Lets look at some examples.


Back in Feb 2010 I attended a seminar by Shelle Rose Charve.  She was talking about how the economy has affected businesses and there reactions.

She broke organisations' overall behaviour into three three types.

1)  "Chicken Little":  Here the emphasis is to run around cutting costs all over the place as a reaction to the economic downturn.  The Chicken Little reference was demonstrated by Shelle running around in circles saying "Cut Costs" "Cut Costs" "Cut Costs" in a clucking voice.  Quite funny, and probably indicative of some behaviour early in the economic crisis.

2) "Hiding in a cave":  Here the approach is to hide from the storm, shut down, stop talking to people and hope the whole crisis will settle down and return to normal.  Again not very constructive.   I asked about organisations who were facing uncertainty and she said that their pattern is to also close down.  Clearly not a constructive constructive position.

3) "Planning for the future":  Some organisations are taking this economic situation as an opportunity.  They are beavering away looking for opportunities. 

I actually think that organisations that are surviving are in this latter part.  I hear that both voluntary liquidations and companies acquiring other companies (Distress sales and cheap assets) are rising. 

I also think this has been a about phases of this economic crisis. Early on there was cost cutting but now the uncertainties are different.  Its no longer about - how deep is this recession and how bad will it be.  Its about how soon will we come out and how quickly and which parts first.  Its also about when will the banks start lending again? 

I'll explore more metaphors for the economy in subsequent posts

Phil

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, and the chief executive had been in post around four years. It was a well researched and documented strategy. It was so well documented that it took me a week to go through all the strategy documents I had been given as background reading.

Yet the chief executive was still frustrated. As far as he was concerned, ‘They didn’t get the strategy’. If they don’t get it, then it is unlikely to be implemented or deliver the results. He was right to be frustrated.

He is not alone and the problem is not peculiar to his type of organization. I have heard this complaint, in all sorts of organizations from large commercial, to public sector bodies, from medium sized listed companies, to family and privately owned organizations. Despite all the valiant efforts of the management team, the message is not getting through as intended by as the person who conceived it.

Yet some organizations communicate their strategy really well. They manage to communicate what they want to achieve and how they will go about it. They get people motivated and remove the blocks that have prevented the strategy from working in the past; blocks that may be deeply embedded within the culture of the organization. They get people behind the strategy, adding to it and making it work in their part of the business. In short, they make it happen.

This book is about what you can do to make the difference in communicating your strategy. It provides you with the tools you can use to plan how the strategy will be communicated. It presents techniques to help communicate the strategy. It equips you with ways to think about how strategy is communicated, analyze what might have gone wrong in the past and make decisions about the best way to get your strategy across. There are some techniques you will be able to apply immediately and others you can incorporate into your communication plans.

You will also find out why I say, "All plans should be burnt"

Phil Jones, Author Communicating Strategy

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 executed.

Part of the reason for the growth in the content was the need to explain the many practical ways in which the strategy is communicated. It is easy to say what should be done. It takes longer to explain how to do it, and I wanted the ‘how to do it’ in this book. I also wanted to provide people with options. There is no one way to communicate strategy well. This is a book of strategy communication tactics that people can pick from and choose as they see fit.

My work with clients has often involved coaching them in language and presentation techniques to help get the message across. Many of these techniques I have learnt in my training as a facilitator and presenter. Some
come from my training as a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) master practitioner. However, I rarely tell my clients that they are using NLP techniques, preferring just to show people great ways to do things. Of course
if they ask, I tell them (and I have had several side conversations that go, ‘You are using NLP techniques, aren’t you?’). You will recognize techniques from a variety of sources. No prior understanding of these techniques or approaches is required for this book.

I recently bumped into a chief executive I had worked with around three years earlier. She said that one of the biggest differences the work had made was to the middle managers, who were now engaged with the bigger picture. They were no longer working in silos, but making a much larger contribution to the organization. I like to think that this has not only helped the senior managers, but has made the working lives of those middle managers better, as well as those of the organization’s customers.

Phil Jones
Author Communicating Strategy

Why did I write Communicating strategy

In early 2006, I noticed that my websites were getting a lot of activity on the topic of ‘communicating strategy’. It was closely behind ‘strategy’ as a topic of interest. As I researched the Internet to see what else was available on the topic, I realized it was a topic that was not well covered.

However, within a few sites I came across one that suggested five principles of communicating strategy, of which one was: ‘You should not communicate your strategy, as you will leak your strategy to the competition.’ I was incensed by this idea, for two reasons. If your strategy is so unsustainable that your competitors can simply copy it that easily, then it is a pretty poor strategy. Secondly, if you don’t tell your people about your strategy, how can they possibly execute it and help you refine it and deliver it?

So, incensed by the ‘don’t communicate your strategy’ idea I looked for books on communicating strategy. There seemed to be none. There were plenty on strategy formulation, and strategy implementation. There were many on public relations. There were lots and lots of interpersonal communications. But there seemed to be nothing specifically on communicating strategy. So I decided to write one based upon all my experience.

I have been helping organizations describe, develop, articulate and communicate their strategy more effectively for over twelve years. I have been privileged to work in some great consultancies with some great colleagues and wonderful clients. The experiences that make up this book come from a whole variety of different types of organizations. I have been on the receiving end of strategy, as a line manager and helping to formulate it in a variety of organizations.

When I worked for the originators of the balanced scorecard, Norton & Kaplan, the emphasis was always on the understanding and drivers of the strategy much more than just its measurement and management.
Rather it has been about helping the management team be clear about the underlying thinking around the strategy, so they could walk out of their board room with a complete and consistent understanding in their heads of what they were trying to achieve, and why. Much of this has involved helping them have a richer conversation as they develop and articulate it. They then have a deeper understanding of the assumptions and underlying thinking, so they can tell the story effectively to their people. The techniques I have seen, learnt and developed through these experiences are in this book.

Read the book, and most importantly, follow what it says and I hope you will be a better and more skilled at communication as a manager or direcor

Phil Jones

Don't over complicate - talking is better

Sometimes you can substantially over complicate a message

Whilst browsing googledocs I came across this lovely little video they have made for Youtube.

It is only 1 min 30 long and beautifully illustrates how we often overcomplicate a simple message...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7y7NafWXeM

What is a good strategy? A behavioural view

There was a question on a linkedin forum recently - "What is a good strategy?"

Many have taken that to mean, "What is a good business strategy?" - but I want to widen this. A behavioural view of strategy...

If you take a much wider view of the word, strategy, you are looking at a persistent pattern of behaviour. Now iin organisations this manifests itself in a market or internally, in recruitment, in developing core competencies, and frequently gets interpreted as focus or uniqueness (by those fans of Porter et al).

But think "behaviour" for a moment, please. How many of you have strategies (persistent patterns of behaviour) for sales, networking, engagements, finding your way to a new place, greeting your loved one, choosing food at lunch time, following linkedin.... These are all strategies in the behavioural sense. You use them because they work.... they are your strategies...

I believe a good (behavioural) strategy has two characteristics:

1) It is a persistent (implicit or explicit) pattern of behaviour that delivers results.

2) It is flexible enough that it can be refined when the pattern of behaviour no longer produces the results that it used to (If you always do what you always did, then you always get what you always got).

Now the first is about persistency and delivery. Over time a learnt behaviour is repeated BECAUSE it delivers results. Also notice that sometimes it is implicit rather than explicit. Many personal strategies that are very effective are actually unclear to the person using them (Note how often people say "I JUST do it" -. Unconscious competence. This is an area that the modelling aspects of NLP can provide particular insights into, amongst other techniques.

By the way, a "bad" strategy can be behaviour that is persistent but that leads to "bad results". A little used pattern of behaviour is merely a tactic.

The second is about gathering feedback, sitting in a second or third position and recognising that the pattern is no longer working (or will stop working. For this read Chris Argyris (Double loop learning ) or Gregory Bateson (Levels of learning in "Towards an ecology of mind").

It is this second aspect that requires a connection to the external world and an understanding of if and how it is changing (as many have observed).

Now I would generalise that most of the comments on this discussion would fall into one of these two categories. Some of the techniques that have been listed are merely that - techniques that that help you apply these two aspects of a good strategy. (I am been controversial here)

There is a third aspect....

3) How well is that strategy adopted by others (implicitly and explicitly)

This is about socialising or communicating a strategy so others understand it as well, learn it and adopt it. We are now into the realm of social memes, learnt behaviour and how societies and groups operate. Again I have generalised quite a lot deliberately to widen the discussion. A strategy (pattern of behaviour) can get adopted as a successful strategy for results or survival (for instance - to survive around here you need keep your head down and don't ask the boss questions...)

So a long post, sorry but three deep characteristics of a good strategy (be that behavioural or organisational)

1) It is a persistent (implicit or explicit) pattern of behaviour that delivers results. (Persistency and delivery)

2) It is flexible enough that it can be refined when the pattern of behaviour no longer produces the results that it used to. (Awareness and learning/adaption)

3) How well is that strategy adopted by others (implicitly and explicitly). (Socialised and learnt effectively)

Phew....got that off my chest...

Phil

You can't swim in sea salt

Do you ask your staff to boil down a message to a single page? Do you find that you are being asked to boil down and shorten down documents? "Just give me the one page version" they say.

I was chatting to a client who was getting frustrated by this. He was being asked to set out how his team help the management to address strategic planning and performance management. Yet the requests were for shorter and shorter documents, despite the complexity of the organisation and the way the planning process was being run.

He was lamenting the fact that they were becoming so short it was impossible to put any content of value in them. He was being asked to boil down the message to something so short and simple it was becoming meaningless.

As he spoke I had this image of a flask of sea water in chemistry lessons at school. As the flask was heated by the Bunsen burner it boiled away until all that was left in the bottom of the flask was a thin residue of the few solids that were originally dissolved in the water. The sea salt.

Whilst this was useful in Chemistry, it is useful in management terms. Whilst you can swim in the sea, when all the water is boiled away, you can no longer swim in it. Hence the phrase that shot into my head, "You can't swim in sea salt"

Ok its an odd thought. You can take this further. As the salt is concentrated (before it is fully boiled away) you end up with a concentrate that is like the dead sea. The salt is so concentrated that you float in the water and never get immersed.

I know - its stretching the point, but its a big issue. Of course managers want a simple message - but not simplistic. Staff need to take time to think through their message and get it across well. You can't use the excuse, "I didn't have time to write you a short letter so I wrote you a long one"

But management have a responsibility also. They need to spend time on issues and look at the detail and the depth. Otherwise they float across the top never immersing themselves in the detail, never getting wet.

This was the concern of my colleague. He was concerned that in boiling it down too far, there was nothing left of substance. The subtleties were not there, the risks could not be spelled out and the implications for others were lost.

Of course this is true when the strategy is being communicated and for many other aspects of management. I suggest you apply the "All plans should be burnt test?" If you lost the memo, would the implications still be in people's heads?

So if you are a manager be sure you do not boil the ocean down to nothing. If you are helping your managers there will be times when you need to say, "This is more subtle than that - and I need you to help".

Boil away, but in the end - you can't swim in sea salt.

Phil

Socialising Strategy (or Socializing strategy)

We talk about communicating strategy and strategy communication, but with all the emphasise on social networking, Facebook, Linkedin, Bebo, Plaxo, etc etc the phase on every one's lips is "Social networking".

So how does this apply to strategy?

Well lets start with the phrase "Socialising strategy" (Or "socializing strategy" for our US cousins). Its interesting how this immediately puts a different emphasise on what is happening. It is no longer about getting the message out (Communicating). It is about the social impact and the conversation within groups, and amongst people, about the strategy.

Socialising strategy suggests that the strategy becomes part of a conversation amongst people that has a life of its own. Individuals are owning a part of it, talking to each other about it and adopting and adapting what it means for them.

Socialising strategy also suggests that it becomes part of the social fabric. It is part of the way people work, what they do, what they say, how they behave, and what they believe.

Socialising strategy suggests it has a life of its own amongst those people.

It is interesting how this phrase seems to convey so much more that communicating strategy. It also gets beyond the glib phrase "Culture" to a far more specific meaning than, "We want our strategy to reflect our culture" or "We want our culture to drive our strategy" With "socialising strategy" we are describing how it becomes a part of the way people work and think and behave.

It is also a more explicit instruction to management. Rather than suggesting managers need to "Communicate the strategy" (which is an action for them), they are responsible for "socialising the strategy" which is a response from other people. In other words, instructing a management team to "Socialise their strategy" means that the emphasise is not just on communication, but on how people respond to the communication and behave as a result.

So here are some questions.

1) Have you been socialising your strategy?

2) Is your strategy socialised?

3) What will you see and experience if your strategy is socialised?

4) What do you have to do to socialise your strategy?

Phil Jones
Author
Communicating Strategy

When organisations drift into hypnotic states

Have you ever noticed that something you may have said in a conversation, may have sent that person's mind thinking, to the extent that they are no longer listening to you, but are processing their own ideas and thoughts. Moreover you have no idea what they are now thinking about.

In effect they have drifted into a state where their mind is processing ideas and working through something. This is an altered state of mind and, if deliberately induced can be considered a mild form of hypnosis.

Last night I attended a session on conversational hypnosis, where Jamie Smart, (an NLP coach and trainer) demonstrated how you can easily do this deliberately, as well as unintentionally. For instance he used the example where he would drop into a conversation a question such as, "so what do you want from reading this blog" and how quickly people started to think about this, even though it was not asked directly.

Now returning to this blog.

I do think its interesting to compare what happens in an individual human, with what happens in organisation. I find that you can start to see parallels and it it also is useful explain things that are going on. Especially when communicating strategy. By now, you will see where I am going.

For instance, I was also thinking this morning about organisations go into altered states and sometimes drift off to process things. The most striking example was an organisation I was working with last year. The management team were to announce the “New strategy presentation” which was coming up in a few weeks. The email that was sent out included the line, “And in a couple of months we’ll also be presenting the location strategy”.

Yes, you have guessed it. The effect of this was staggering. For at least two days no work was done. Rumours abounded. People started considering their futures once their site was closed (even though there was no announcement whatsoever so far). As it happens they were right and the site was to close over the next two years, but that was not the point. Between the "suggestion" and the actual announcement, there was a noticeable different air in the place as people sized up opportunities and considered the implications of moves, changes and whether they would get a place in the new, smaller structure.

A simpler example is when a change is announced (or not even announced but simply rumours take hold) and the organisation takes time to think about it and process it. It even occurs when new measures are made, new practices are introduced or with anything where people's activities and work is influenced.

So, when thinking about strategy communication and what effect you want to have on your staff, you need to consider two things:

• Am I sure that I am not causing the mind of the organisation to drift off into some altered state and lose sight of what they should be doing?

• Can I make the communication more effective by inviting people to think about the implications and help implementation?

Phil Jones
Author Communicating Strategy
You can buy Communicating Strategy here
For training in how to communicate your strategy more effectively,
click here for my contact details

Mission statements: A failure to communicate

Mission statements can be fraught with problems but one I came across the other day wins an award for the worst I have ever seen.

What sort of organisation do you think this mission statement comes from?

• Welcome to (Our company) and a team that’s passionate about creativity, your ideas and generating innovative solutions with flair, impact and individuality that provides real benefits for your business.
• With a philosophy driven by meeting every challenge, our dedication to realising your vision will exceed expectations in every way. We’ll make the experience of working with us a pleasure, building strong relationships by consistently delivering the exceptional standards upon which our reputation is based.
• Backed by the skills and extensive resources of our team, a personal co-ordinator will work with you throughout your relationship with us. You’ll get just the right balance of help, guidance and support, adding value at every opportunity and ensuring the outstanding service you receive matches your requirements in every way.

Frankly, an easier question would be, what sort of organisation would it not apply to.

It is actually from a Spa and conference centre. Can you believe that? I deny anyone to work that out. Even as a consultant I have to be astonished by the jargon, buzz words and management speak that this contains. Its astonishing.

I have a suspicion that this one came about by from cobbling together all the mission statements left on flip charts by every company that has ever visited the place for a startegy away day.

In Communicating Strategy I explain where many mission statements go wrong and how to state them in a way that is far more useful. Here are some simple tips:

1) Make it clear what industry you are in, who you serve and why you want to help them.

2) What is your purpose. In this case I suspect it is either for people to feel special and pampered (the spa) or provide an conference experience where they can relax and achieve their conference's objectives.

3) Be specific about where you actually add value. I don't want innovation (no jugglers please) when people serve coffee. I just want nice coffee and biscuits served by someone I don't notice. Serving coffee should be seen as a core capability not a "Challenge".

4) Be honest. Do the staff believe this? Do they even remember it? Can they think to themselves, am I carrying this out the organisation's mission? I doubt it with this one.

5) Your customers should relate to it. It should mean something to them and their business so they feel that you will relate to them (unlike this one)

Most importantly the mission should really reflect the purpose of the organisation. Why is it there? Mission and purpose are synonymous.

Phil Jones
Author Communicating Strategy

Performance leadership and management

It is a cliché that “People do not like change”. It is also wrong. It is not that people do not like change, they do. What they dislike is change where they have no control over their destiny or influence over the direction.

The problems of measure mania and tyranny of targets come as much from the effects of diktat and imposed targets as the effects of too many unrelated measures and targets.

In contrast, my objective, and I hope your objective, is to have a team of people who understand what they need to achieve and also why they need to achieve it; a team who have helped develop and refine the strategy, who understand its purpose, the timing, its importance and the level of ambition required, and who that are engaged in the process so they are thinking about how they can help, contribute and make a difference.

These are aspects of a culture of performance. It is management’s responsibility to lead and create this environment. I call this performance leadership.

Making sure it happens is performance management.

Learning from this as you implement and monitor your strategy, so you can refine, develop and re-communicate the refinements to your strategy, is called strategic learning.

I use these expressions a lot when talking with clients as theyare distinctions that help clarify how strategy is communicated.

You can read more on the excitant website about creating a culture of performance.

Phil Jones
Excitant Ltd

Communicating tough decisions

Communicating Tough decisions
Phil Jones, Author of Communicating Strategy, published by Gower

As Directors and Managers, you sometimes have to make a tough decision: to make people redundant, close down plants, move services off shore, move manufacturing facilities or shed unprofitable customers.

Of course, you will need to plan these changes carefully. You will need to comply with statutory requirements and contractual conditions. There are statutory redundancy periods and notice periods to comply with. There may also be consultation arrangements with unions and worker representative groups. In some countries this will include a workers’ executive, in others the union, or a workers’ representative panel or group. Some employers will stick with statutory minimum terms for redundancies. Others may decide to offer preferential terms to all or particular groups of staff.

You may decide to put in place counselling, job assistance or support for any people made redundant. You may even be eligible for funding from government depending upon where you are located. Some organizations help their ex-employees start new businesses, so they become or move to suppliers, customers and competitors. Remember, these people will continue to talk with people in your industry and with customers and suppliers. They will continue to be ambassadors for your company, whether you employ them or not. How you treat them will be reflected back on you as an organization.

Questions

• What statutory or compulsory arrangements do you have to make?
• What contractual obligations do you have?
• What are you doing to help and how are you communicating this help to these people?
• How are you ensuring that those people who leave remain ambassadors for your company?

Communicating after redundancies

While attention is paid to those being made redundant, you also need to talk with the ‘survivors’. They might be relieved they are still in a job. They might wish they were offered a redundancy cheque. They might simply fear that they will be included in the next round of redundancies.

On occasion, when people leave an organization quickly, with no notice, sometimes those who remain are asked not to contact those who have left. I do find this strange, but it is not unusual. I have personally witnessed it twice. In one case people were explicitly asked not to contact those that had left. It is almost as if the management were saying, ‘Those people are bad and you are the survivors. Do not mix with them’. In reality, these people were probably your friends and will remain so long after they have left.

Some of the ‘survivors’, perhaps when the cuts seem somewhat arbitrary, may feel embarrassed that they still have a job when other were selected. You get a double whammy: rejected by your company and rejected by your ex-workers.

You will probably have selected key people you are keen to retain. If you handle the redundancies poorly, you may disenfranchise them as well. Handle this badly, and they will simply leave when they are ready, on their terms.

The message is simple: pay attention to what messages and signals you send out, both to those who are leaving and to those who remain.

Questions

• How will you deal with the survivors?
• How will you manage the message to them?
• How will you make sure they do not leave at the soonest opportunity as well?
  

Explain and engage people in the economics of the business

Any strategy is likely to involve a cost of change. This might be associated with projects or programmes of work aimed at delivering a better process, the cost of redundancy or investment in a new factory.

Engage people in the economics of the business. The level of detail need not (and should not) include all the detailed financial calculations but should explain the broad economics. Amongst the heresies in chapter 2 there is Heresy 1: People are not stupid. Explain the economics and don’t dumb it down. For example:

1) ‘At the moment we make this much per car and we want to be making this much. Steel prices have risen by 40 per cent which has cut our margins from eight per cent to four per cent. This means we shall make a loss of £500 million this year, unless we find ways to cut costs elsewhere.’

2) ‘If we can avoid an increase in costs above inflation, whilst managing the eroding prices, we will remain profitable. But only just and bonuses will need to be cut back.’

When people understand how what they do affects the costs, they are better positioned to make informed judgements about helping to improve it. If they are kept away from the economics, how can they understand and assist?

Questions

• What is your economic model for the business?
• What are the economic levers or drivers of your strategy?
• Can you explain these in a simple expression?

Conclusion

The clearer your communications, the easier it is for them to understand them and trust them. Even if there is bad news, explaining the bad news well, will engender trust and understanding.

About the author

Phil Jones is Managing Director of Excitant Ltd, and a consultant and author. This article is based on material from his book, Communicating Strategy.

Phil has helped a wide variety of commercial and public sector organisations communicate their strategy, improve how they manage performance and deliver results. He can be contacted via email at phil.jones@excitant.co.uk or via his website http://www.excitant.co.uk/. There is also his Strategy communication blog at http://www.communicating-strategy.com/