Strategy Execution is a Change Process - Part III

In this series of posts, I am viewing a Strategy Execution implementation through a Change Management lens.

For those needing a review, I'm comparing the ESE concepts against Kotter's latest installment, where he outlined the eight "Stages of Change."  They include:

1. - Sense of Urgency
2. - Guiding Coalition
3. - Developing a Vision
4. - Communicating the Vision
5. - Empowering Employees
6. - Short Term Wins
7. - Consolidating Wins
8. - Anchoring in the Culture

In my last post (part 2) I wrote about the Guiding Coalition. So now let's discuss the Vision and how to Communicate it. This is all about defining where you're going, and then telling everyone, many, many times in multiple different ways how you're going to get there.

The first piece, in my humble opinion, is deceptively easy.  The Vision is the strategy execution journey.  The challenge is identifying where your organization currently sits in this long trek, what it's doing well, where the gaps reside, and how you're going to progress down the path.

The Vision development comes in 2 parts

1. First you have to define the near term Vision. This can be the goal of developing a real strategic planning process, or deploying scorecards in a coherent way, or tying process improvement to strategy.
2. Second, you have to define the entire, longer-term Vision. This second piece is quite difficult, as it takes a lot of time and some assumptions. But even more, it requires laying out the facts (which can be brutal) that this journey is hard, tiring, seemingly never-ending.  For many, this sounds counter intuitive. But from experience, I can say that it is far better and less risky to go for buy-in for the pain now, rather than allowing people to feel duped later. Be up front, sell the benefits, and make sure people understand the necessity of the medicine you're offering and exactly how much better they will feel once cured.

The second piece is best considered as a campaign plan. Think of it like a Marketing Campaign. You will need to organize and fund resources who will communicate the Vision and elaborate on each step all along the way. You may need help from graphic designers, copy editors, trainers, public speakers, web conferencers, printers, and thinkers. Since Strategy Execution is mega-change for many, keeping people informed about where they're going, where they are, and where they've been is the goal of communicating the vision.

To be sure to cover your bases, consider doubling whatever estimates you make on how much time and effort is needed to effectively communicate the Vision. Why? People tend to forget, there's turnover, people get lazy, and sometimes you might think they've even have brain erasures from alien beings.

It helps to list your desired communications vehicles:

• Posters

• Screen savers

• Flyers

• Intranet pages

• ID badge holders

• Formal brochures

• Stump speeches

• Repeating lunch-and-learn sessions

• Executive speeches for the boss

• Training sessions

• Routine office calls to 'check-in'

• Videos 

Now, think about where you want to be with all of this. Ultimately, you want to alter the fabric of your organizational DNA so that people will just know that this is how you do business. Not that it's new. Not that it's a change from how it used to be. This is the bus: get on or get off.

Bon voyage!

In the next installment, I will delve into how you can empower employees. Because, of course, you can't do it all by yourself.