The Christmas Tree Syndrome

On this occasion, I would like to share with you some experiences that I have found throughout my professional career, working with transformational leaders in organizations with high global impact and that present a series of common challenges to many companies and that we can group into three categories:

1. Strategic Planning and Implementation

2. Organizational Culture

3. Performance and Monitoring

Have you ever heard your employees say or express that they do not know the corporate strategy and, therefore, do not know how to direct their actions effectively?

We must do something correctly if we hear our employees make that statement in climate surveys, team conversations, or individual talks. Leaders often minimize this data, arguing that employees need help understanding the vision and/or perhaps still need to read the document with the corporate vision and strategy.

Now, while it is possible on some occasions that the argument outlined by executives may be supported, it may be worth asking if there are other reasons, given that studies show that 95% of employees do not understand their organization's strategy.

What happens then when employees are NOT aligned with the corporate strategy?

Probably in today's business world, this is irrelevant (because we know that 61% of those surveyed recognize that their companies often have difficulty closing the gap between strategy formulation and its daily implementation). However, the evidence also shows organizations' impact when employees are empowered and aligned with corporate objectives.

When Gallup researchers analyzed differences in performance between company work units, the benefits of having engaged employees were clear. When comparing employee engagement levels, Gallup found that top and bottom-quartile business units and teams had the following differences in business results:

• 81% in absenteeism
• 18% in billing for high-turnover organizations
• 43% in billing for low-turnover organizations
• 64% in safety incidents (accidents)
• 41% in quality (defects)
• 10% in customer loyalty/engagement
• 18% in productivity (sales)
• 23% in profitability

Another timely benefit of employee engagement in times of uncertainty is that high engagement drives retention. Actively engaged employees are less likely to seek new job opportunities. Low-engagement teams typically endure turnover rates that are 18% to 43% higher than high-engagement teams.

Physics and geometry can explain What I have discovered, and I have called this theory “The Christmas Tree Syndrome.”

Most organizations with this gap problem present matrix organization models; if we could represent their structure with a geometric figure, a triangle would be its best representation.

Of course, if all departments, divisions, and sub-organizations were aligned with the objectives set out in the corporate strategy, this image would be almost a perfect representation; however, as this is not what usually happens, this figure is presented in a distorted form, given that each department, vision or sub-organization defines its objectives, without validating whether these are aligned or not, with those proposed by its senior executives and often deviating from the course by up to 180 degrees.

Therefore, the previous figure would not be valid if we had to represent this geometrically. This organization would be better represented in forming a “Christmas tree,” which, although it maintains the general geometry of a triangle, its ends deviate. They develop without following the same direction, and if we let them grow, they would modify their structure.

The main difference lies in the forces that move people, their motivations, values , and the cooperation required to push everyone in the same direction. It is not only about improving communication but also about understanding, at each level of the organization, the effective accountability and responsibility that each of the employees in their respective departments/divisions has concerning our interlocked organizations, especially those from which they are at higher levels by design. Other organizational models are much more flexible and narrow, where this happens naturally.

?As I have highlighted in another of my publications, An effective culture is the key to strategy execution, and conscious leadership is the key to an effective culture. Therefore, organizations succeed when their leaders consciously develop an effective culture and fail when they do not.

Culture is the system of shared beliefs (what is true), shared values (what is essential), and shared norms (what is right) that guide members about the way things should be done in the organization, the expectations that they need to meet to fit in and about what they can expect - and demand - from others.

You need to monitor and track to be successful.

You'd think it would be glaringly obvious, and what's more, it's what we've seen and heard constantly over the years. Still, if you fail to measure your performance against your strategy, it may become a slideshow or a PDF that will become less relevant.

Organizations successfully execute their strategies by forcing themselves to create an implementation model, having a formal mechanism to monitor performance, and then being honest with themselves about the gaps to refine where necessary and get back on track.

Implementing programs would be timely and convenient so executives can share more time with employees in various roles and, above all, with designated spaces to listen to their clients. In such a way as to collect information to evaluate the implementation of the strategy and take corrective actions that will allow us to reach the promised land. This should be something we practice frequently rather than once a year, with the arrival of Christmas.