The value of your strategic direction is only as good as the understanding your people have of it. The value of their actions are only as good as their relevance to the strategic plan.
What percentage of companies have a plan? How good are the plans that most companies develop? Does the quality of the plan matter when most companies don’t execute them anyway? In fact, 9 out of 10 companies fail to execute their strategy.
This following is an excerpt from the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative’s information base:
Vision Barrier – only 5% of workforce understand the strategy
People Barrier – only 25% of managers have personal objectives and incentives linked to strategy
Management Barrier – 85% of executive team spend less than one hour/month discussing strategy
Resource Barrier – 60% of organizations don’t link budgets to strategy
How effectively does your organization implement the strategy? Ask yourself the following diagnosis questions:
1) Go to 5 employees at the hierarchically lowest scale of your company and ask them how their position contributes to the strategy of the company. Ask them to describe the direction of the company.
2) Find another few employees in the middle of the company and ask them how the company is performing against the plan and what reporting mechanisms are in place to allow the company to asses it’s performance and course-correct.
3) Ask a few C level staff to describe the company vision, mission and how their divisions plan to contribute in the 1-3 year term.
Responsibility for communication rests with the leadership positions. You can only create alignment and momentum when your resources understand the direction and are positioned to support it.
Are you a 1/10 company or a 9/10 company?