“Does the strategic message really matter?”
Simply put, the answer is yes. We know, now more than ever, that a strong strategic message not only reduces uncertainty among employees and provides the context necessary to make sense of initiative-level actions and messages, but it also aligns and guides the leadership team. On the other hand, a poorly designed strategy message can lead to a skeptical workforce and a severely misaligned leadership team.
As a result of the economic downturn and to survive the financial slump, companies are changing how they operate. In doing so, some organizations are going back to the drawing board to revise and refresh their strategic message to align with how they’re now doing business. Others acknowledge the need to update their strategic message, but are hesitant to do so for fear that employees will resist the change and leadership will lose credibility.
If you’re thinking about revisiting your organization’s strategic message, here are a few recommendations for doing so in a way that promotes employee buy-in and builds leadership credibility.
Review recent decisions and messages.
Hold up your current strategy message against the most recent actions and decisions of the leadership team. If one of your current strategic priorities is to ‘invest in innovation” and you’ve recently cut your research and development budget for 2009, then it’s probably time to re-think your business priorities and change your strategy message for the year.
Measure employee understanding.
Research offers a credible, concrete, data-driven way to validate or support your argument, and having a sense of the pulse of the organization often yields access to the leadership team. For example, conducting a strategic alignment survey that assesses the credibility of the message set and the leadership team, as well as the level of employee understanding of and engagement with the current strategy message, may give you just the ammunition you need to gain senior leadership support for a revised strategy.
Get leadership on board.
Brief the leadership team, discuss the importance of a strong strategy message, and address the need to and consequences (positive and negative) of updating the message set. Be prepared to talk candidly about the fact that everything they do as leaders sends a message. Share the findings from your employee research to help shape your argument and support your proposal.
Don’t underestimate the importance of a clear, actionable strategy message—and don’t let your leadership underestimate it either. To read more about why the message really does matter click here.
Watching the Inauguration of our 44th President made me think about the transition Barack Obama has ahead of him, and the transition we, as a nation, have in front of us. When it comes to Presidential transitions, we are lucky—we know it is happening, we expect it, and the media inundates us with information. But significant leadership changes in organizations are not so cut and dry.
Shifts in corporate leadership are far more unpredictable, and we can see additional implications when announcing leadership changes. That said, it’s essential to prepare internal audiences for the transition if you want leadership to maintain credibility. Here are three coaching points to keep in mind when announcing leadership changes at the management and director levels:
Communicate early and often. You need to communicate leadership changes to your employees before the media gets hold of the information. Though timing of these kinds of communications is critical and often difficult—particularly for publicly traded organizations— treat employees as a privileged audience. Be proactive and frame the conversation for your organization before an outside or informal network does, using a variety of channels (i.e. newsletters, department meetings, town halls). Cascade the initial leadership change throughout the organization so each employee hears it from his or her direct manager. Leaders should subsequently update employees to keep them in the loop, using both formal channels (intranets, memos) and informal channels (conversations at lunch, walking through your department).
Manage meaning around the transition. Situational context gives meaning to the message, so be strategic in creating it. Since employees are more likely to believe informal communication than formal, find out what people are saying and thinking before creating the message. Learn how people really view the change in leadership and the departure of the present leader by walking around and listening to the water-cooler talk. Ask employees and leaders who are well-connected—those who know the rumors but don’t spread them—to update you, and then address the crucial issues that arise. While you’ll never stop all the rumors, you can control some by reaching out to employees in informal conversations and offering the truth.
Keep the message future-focused. Acknowledge the previous leader’s positive contributions, but focus the message, both formal and informal, on the opportunities ahead. Don’t talk about the “big shoes” the new leader has to fill. If the previous leader is leaving on unfavorable terms, communicate it as an example of what will not be tolerated going forward.
Leadership transitions can be a tremendous opportunity for organizations to set the tone and expectations for future activities. The organizations who’ve handled these situations best are those that put forethought into what they want employees to know, feel, do, and believe—communicating strategically and in a way that’s tailored to each employee audience. Take a note from those who do it well, asking yourself what sets them apart, and you will see that these organizations thoughtfully use communication.
Is urban violence viral? It might be, according to experts cited in this New York Times magazine article. The essence:
CeaseFire’s founder, Gary Slutkin, is an epidemiologist and a physician who for 10 years battled infectious diseases in Africa. He says that violence directly mimics infections like tuberculosis and AIDS, and so, he suggests, the treatment ought to mimic the regimen applied to these diseases: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source. “For violence, we’re trying to interrupt the next event, the next transmission, the next violent activity,” Slutkin told me recently. “And the violent activity predicts the next violent activity like H.I.V. predicts the next H.I.V. and TB predicts the next TB.” Slutkin wants to shift how we think about violence from a moral issue (good and bad people) to a public health one (healthful and unhealthful behavior).
It seems plausible, and interestingly, very similar to our approach to stakeholder management at the office–except in that case, we’re trying to foster the spread of behavior rather than hinder it.
Either way, the central issue is network effects, and in particular, the role of hyper-connected actors within the network. Think of it this way: If someone catches the cold, but only interacts with a few other people, the rate of transmission is likely to be low. If on the other hand the ill person shakes 100 hands a day, well, a lot of people are probably going to get sick. Substitute the willingness to enact violence, or support for your company’s SAP implementation, for the common cold, and it’s clear that not everyone in the network is equal in the effects they exert on the whole. It’s all about dealing with the critical few.
For the seminal academic piece read Rogers; for the seminal popular piece read Gladwell (the book or the original article).
We work very hard to teach leaders that human beings are sense-making creatures: We try, at every opportunity, to make sense of what we see, hear, and experience. A consequence is that when a vacuum of information exists, we try to fill it by creating meaning of our own, which may or may not be close to the reality a leader is trying to convey.
Thanks to an email forward by my wife Kate, this morning I saw a wonderful example of this: Over two hundred people deciding to freeze in place, simultaneously, on the main concourse of Grand Central Station in New York. Watch the video, and watch folks try to create meaning out of the event. Acting class? Protest? What in the world IS this? Everybody there has a different interpretation, but they all HAVE an interpretation, and it’s one they’ve crafted out of their past experiences and the overall context at hand. They fill the vacuum.
So the question is: What vacuums of information are your employees filling with meaning? You may not know, but you can count on the people you lead to create meaning for your every decision and action. Your job as a leader is to frame those decisions and actions, adding context so their interpretation is as close as possible to your intention. In times of uncertainty or change, when what you can communicate may be limited, this can be difficult. But there are things you can do to help:
- Refuse to allow vacuums. If there is information you’re not able to share because the facts aren’t settled or HR, your superior, or legal won’t permit it, frame the context by communicating probabilities: What’s certain, likely, unknown (or what you can’t say), unlikely, and impossible. Doing so at the very least contextualizes and constrains the meaning employees (or your peers, or your kids) can create.
- Refuse to let silence be a message. NOT communicating when employees know something is afoot sends a message, and it’s a relational one that employees will interpret as ranging from “I don’t care” to “I don’t respect you.” The act of communicating in the face of uncertainty, be it by sharing probabilities, or even saying “I don’t know” or “I can’t tell you and here’s why,” sends a message about your identity and the relationship. It says “I care” and “I respect you,” both of which are essential to maintaining relational capital during uncertain times.
- Aggressively challenge incorrect conclusions. If you find that employees (or the Board, or your kids) have filled the vacuum with incorrect meaning, challenge and correct those assumptions. Provide the facts, or if you can’t, the probabilities or even the “I can’t say,” but don’t allow the wrong meaning to exist. Not only does it keep bad information in the system, it can brand a leader as passive. In the face of very disruptive change or very bad news, an audience can easily interpret this passivity as cowardice.
Managing meaning during difficult or changing times isn’t easy, but it’s a leader’s burden. The point is to get folks through it with as much relational capital and loyalty as possible–and silence is antithetical to both.
