Communicating Strategy: The Book, Blog, Techniques, to engage your staff

Communicating strategy is not enough – socialise your strategy

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:35:15 +0000

So you told them about your strategy, told them again, and then again once more for good measure. But here is the rub – they still don’t get it. Their behaviours, language, actions still are not reflecting the new behaviours, language or actions that you were hoping for. Now I could trot out clichés about [...]

Mission statements and values: The “one thousand and six words” problem.

admin — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 06:59:46 +0000

I suspect you have sat in the reception of an organisation and looked at their nicely framed organisational values and mission statements on the walls. Just about every organisation has them, on their walls, in their corporate brochures and on their website. You may well have been in organisations when the mission or values statements [...]

Communication during acquisition

admin — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:31:43 +0000

Having recently being involved in the due diligence phase of an acquisition process, it was interesting to think through the communication from the seller’s perspective and the perspective of the people employed in the plant that were were trying to acquire. This particular plant (I cannot give any details) was a subsidiary that the selling [...]

Blackberry outage – a great example of how not to communicate strategy

admin — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:19:45 +0000

So it is now day three of the great blackberry outage, and what do we know? I know emails come to my desktop but not to my blackberry. Then suddenly, 4-8 hours later I get a burst onto my blackberry. Not good when I am out and about. Well if you go to the RIM [...]

Why mission, vision and strategy statements are often too vague…

admin — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:12:01 +0000

…and what we can do about it. How do we make sure that our mission, vision and strategy are understood? Are sticky, and stay in peoples’ minds? In the book, Made to stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, there is a lovely example of how to create stories that are concrete for people. The problem [...]

Why do many (corporate) mission or vision statements omit the obvious?

admin — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 10:28:44 +0000

Why do many (corporate) mission or vision statements omit the obvious? TO MAKE MONEY or “To create a return on the capital invested in the organisation by the owners and funders.” Are their mission or vision statements pandering to a different audience? Are they really what the owners investors think? Are they some sort of [...]

Do you have employees, or people in your business

admin — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:29:05 +0000

Whilst researching my next book, I was discussing with a Chief Executive how he communicated the culture his organisation. He explained that they published the revenue, margin and profit from every deal on the wall. Everyone knew what the overheads were so that they knew how many deals covered their expenses for the month. [...]

Communicating your strategy more effectively, Part 6: Key messages

admin — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:53:12 +0000

What have we been discussing? Communication of strategy is not just about talking. Its about people being different. Having different needs. Thinking in different ways and having different views of the world. You can hear it in their language, see it in their behaviour, and sense it in their actions, emotions and persona. Its [...]

Communicating your strategy more effectively, Part 5: Communicating through your actions

admin — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 11:49:36 +0000

Communication through actions So you have told the story of the strategy, but do you back it up with actions. Do your actions also communicate the strategy? Take three examples: 1) I want to encourage excellent customer service. I measure the time with a customer and set targets to minimise it so you speak to [...]

Communicating your strategy effectively, Part 4: Communicating the journey

admin — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 09:40:03 +0000

Communicating the “how?” Communicating the journey. We know where we want to go, quite clearly and tangibly. We know why we want to go there. But how do we get there? How do we make the journey? How do we communicate we mean business with this strategy? To explain the journey, the most effective way [...]