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

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

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