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

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