Happy New Culture

Around the world, New Year’s Day is celebrated, both as a time of past reflection and forward looking. It’s when we resolve to do better and make good on our promises. For organisations, it’s an opportune time to renew, reimagine and reinvent culture.

January. Traditionally, the month when boardrooms teem with executives intent on formulating The Annual Strategic Plan. And yet, so often in these top-heavy, future-focused discussions, culture barely gets a mention.

It’s an oversight that can have costly consequences.

Aligning culture with strategy

The case for aligning culture with strategy is not new; nor is it weak. With alignment comes benefits: More synergies, less silos; visible and active leadership; accessibility to insights; and consistent innovation. But these benefits are conditional on two points: 1) employees having a clear and shared understanding of organisational strategy, and 2) employees having the resources, as well as the energy and enthusiasm to execute strategy.

Yet, senior executives still get it wrong. A strategy, no matter how brilliantly conceived, in the hands of uninformed, uninvolved and unengaged employees will fail.

In a global online assessment of organisational capability conducted by Gary L. Neilson and his team at Strategy&, employees at three out of every five companies rated their organisation weak at strategic execution.

To be sure, that’s an employee evaluation of management failure.

Now, stack it up with the finding in a Harvard Business Review survey; that 58 percent of people say they trust strangers more than their boss, and you can see the predicament. Strategy implementation isn’t failing because there’s a problem with strategy. Strategy execution is failing because there’s a people problem.

Put a climate survey to work

The place to start is with an accurate assessment of your employees’ expectations of your organisation. More specifically, a climate survey.

Climate surveys help determine whether an organisation’s behaviours, attitudes and beliefs align with its mission and strategy.

Not to be confused with an engagement survey, a climate survey measures the mood of your organisation at a specific time – in this instance, at the start of a new year, when people are inclined to be more reflective and contemplative.

We recommend a climate survey that covers four aspects relating to strategy execution: Employees’ understanding of the business goals; belief in the leadership; management support; and self-management capability. Here are the actual survey statements that speak to these four aspects:

• I know what the goals of our organisation are.
• I believe that our leaders put our people first.
• I am actively supported in my role by my team leader.
• I am enabled and empowered to perform at my best.

The responses to these four statements will give you a behavioural diagnosis of people-and-strategy alignment. What’s more, the results will provide insight into the interventions you may need to implement towards optimal alignment.

Because, make no mistake, optimal alignment is what you want. Having employees who fully understand, and who are fully invested in your business outcomes, ensures success. But optimal alignment demands that you put your people first. Genuinely.

Put people at the heart of your strategic plan

The reason so many strategic plans fail in execution is simple: The people responsible for execution are, more often than not, disconnected from the plan.

So, here are three steps to reconnect people to your strategic plan, and align your organisation for success:

Plan with people in mind

When setting your strategy, identify, not only the key initiatives you want to carry out, but also the roles and skills those initiatives will require. Then, go further, and consider the specific values and behaviours that will facilitate their implementation. Using this method, you come to strategise in a people-centric way. It’s a leadership approach that gets everyone thinking about strategy as a people-dependent function.

Spread the word (and the big picture)

Of course, it’s vital that employees understand your strategy – also, what they need to do to implement it. But, perhaps even more importantly, employees need to feel that they can relate to your strategy.

This means sharing the thinking behind the strategy, and explaining the need for the business to be moving in a particular direction.

Communication of business strategy can make or break successful implementation. So, when employees ask why you’ve decided on a strategic direction, be ready to answer – with particularity. By this we mean, give specifics: reveal your research, share the facts and stats, answer questions, enter into debate. What matters is that you engage employees in the communication of your strategy. This ensures that strategy, and strategy execution, is an involving and participatory experience. Relatedness, done right.

Celebrate achievements – no matter how small

It’s easy to fall into the trap of reporting back on strategy implementation at executive level, exclusively. But, if you’ve made the transition to people-centric strategy formulation and implementation, strategy feedback should happen at all levels on your organisation, and involve each and every employee. Also, if there’s good news or solid progress against strategic milestones, recognise the people responsible for these quick wins. The more you turn strategy into a story about your people, the greater engagement, buy-in and commitment you’ll earn.

New year is an opportune time for business because it’s an opportune time for human beings. As a fresh start, it involves people taking stock and reflecting back and forwards with a sense of optimism and wellbeing. For organisations, it’s the perfect time to focus on people and to develop a culture build around purpose. What are you waiting for?