Who’s in charge of strategy at your organisation? And who get’s invited to participate?
For most organisations the list of people who get invited to strategic conversations is a fairly short one. I’m not entirely sure why this is but I’m guessing it’s some combination of the following:
- Our strategic conversations might be sensitive and not everyone can be trusted.
- Some people aren’t really qualified to participate.
- Most people aren’t interested in strategy.
- If we involve too many people the process it will take too long and be too hard.
- Our strategy involves job cuts and we don’t want to ruin the surprise.
I’m not sure the above rationale/reasons really hold up to scrutiny, and, with the exception of number five, I’ve found that most people enjoy and actively contribute to strategic conversations when given the chance.
The problem is though, when we limit the list of attendees, you also limit a number of other things as well. You limit the number of ideas that will be contributed, you limit the amount of understanding people will have, and you limit the level of ownership people take in the final product/outcome.
Research undertaken by Timothy Devinney and his colleagues at the University of Technology in Sydney and published in Harvard Business Review found that amongst some of Australia’s biggest companies only 29% of employees could recognise their own company’s strategy amongst a set of six multiple choice question*.
* This obviously isn’t very good but when you take it a step further it get’s even worse. A quick back of the envelope calculation suggests about half of those who correctly picked their organisations strategy could have picked it based on pure luck. A random choice would have a one in six chance of picking the right answer which equates to approximately 17%.
This should be cause for alarm bells to start ringing in board rooms across the country. If 71% of staff don’t know the strategy then more than two thirds of the workforce are unable to align their work with their colleagues or connect to the broader goals of the business. In fact the majority of staff could be actively pulling in the wrong direction and not even know they are doing so.
The thing is, when this happens we invariably don’t blame the strategy we blame the execution. But if a great strategy can’t be executed is it really that great? Shouldn’t a really great strategy take into account the organisations capacity for execution during it’s formulation?*
* And perhaps if we’d engaged more widely with the organisation during the strategy development process, might we have found out about some of the execution issues earlier.
So what is the alternative? Obviously we can’t invite everyone to participate in strategy development, that would be outrageous… or would it be?
As a starting point it would make sense to invite anyone you’re relying on for the strategy’s execution. At a minimum this extends beyond the external consultant*, board and the leadership team to senior managers and coordinators, but it’s quite possibly that the invite list should be extended to everyone in the organisation.
* Obviously it would be entirely incongruent of me to suggest that external consultants shouldn’t be involved in the strategy development process but it’s important that they are there to facilitate its development, not do it for you. Sadly, strategy development is often outsourced because people are time poor and have someone else to blame should the strategy not work. But the risk of strategy not working is far higher if there isn’t ownership of it within the organisation.
In fact advocates of Open Strategy would question why you would stop there. In addition to your staff they would suggest inviting your customers, suppliers and other stakeholders as well. Obviously, how people are invited to participate matters, and when necessary, appropriate levels of confidentiality must be maintained. However, if people aren’t invited to participate at all, your strategy will always be yours, but it will never truly be theirs.
Simon
