back to writings How hard can it be?

When I was at school a popular book was “101 elephant jokes” containing funny and often absurd riddles. One was: Q: How do you sculpt an elephant? A: Get a stone and a chisel and chip away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.

Researching for this writing I found that the words have variously been attributed to Michelangelo, John Ruskin and random stereotypes, with the waggish implication “how hard can it be?” Probably about as hard as it is to develop, communicate and execute a strategy for a complex organisation – large or small – typically with leaders and employees at different levels of mastery, experience and engagement. So, quite hard. But not impossible. There are myriad frameworks, methodologies and guidelines you can learn and implement, if you have the time. If you don’t, and before you pitchfork even more resources into a nebulous strategic planning black hole, consider these points.

Keep the customer at the core

Don’t do things for the sake of doing them, and be clear how everything enhances the customer experience. Don’t know what your customers think? Ask them. Think you know what your customers think, or did when you asked them years ago? Ask them again. Don’t know exactly what they think, because you rely on feedback from the people who sell your products? Find out direct. And don’t just ask about product. Ask what they think of your company, your brand and your people. Everything you do needs to have line of sight to the customer. If an activity is purely internally focussed and totally necessary, make sure it is as cost-effective and efficient as possible because your customer will not care and certainly doesn’t want to pay for it.

Every child doesn’t have to win a prize

There’s an inclination to give the same weight to each functional area because, well, they’re all represented by a whole person. After all, it rarely goes down well when entire departments get scant mention in the company plan, unless the team members are well aware of the purpose and strategy. It is inevitable that some will be more prominent, namely the current and future revenue and growth engines and those undergoing transformation. Don’t apologise for that.

Is everybody listening?

How will team members be aware of the plan, the direction and the success strategy? You’ll tell them, of course. There will be a town hall meeting, something in the newsletter and the trickle-down communication from line managers who themselves have been sent an email or two about it.

Not enough. Internal communications are critical to the successful execution of strategy because the employee experience informs the customer experience. Everyone needs to know what success looks like, why you’re employing your specific strategies and exactly how each person plays their part. Every team member should be able to articulate the company strategy. If they can’t articulate it, then they can only be aligning their actions to it by coincidence and not design.

That elephant again

This is where the elephant sculpture comes in. For team members, determining how to allocate resource – time, money, priority – is rarely an obvious choice and open to subjectivity. Some of the choices will be in a comfort zone, so easily justifiable using any existing positive bias. But unless this is aligned with the strategy, it will do nothing but dilute the effort. That is why it is just as important - if not more important - to be specific about what is not part of the strategy, and why, especially in the early days when people are still getting their heads around it.

Consider your company strategy:

• Is the customer at the core?
• Is it clear what success looks like?
• Can everybody say what it is and how what they do contributes?

If not, conduct a strategy audit to see where things are adrift and make a plan to get it back on track.