Tips for setting and sharing strategy

Every leader wants to set a clear direction for his/her team. But how does one actually accomplish that? It shouldn’t be that hard, right?

The innumerable books, articles, podcasts, and business school courses on the topic suggest that this is anything but a trivial task. Moreover, the sheer amount of related expert content asserts the importance of the required skills not just during annual strategy planning, but in every part of the journey that follows.

But perhaps you’ve been in a situation where it seems your strategy flew over everyone’s heads and the company goals went in one ear and out the other. Your team spent weeks on the planning process and the resulting slide deck. You might have been wondering: Did your much anticipated strategy announcement have zero impact? Does no one care where the company is headed? What are people even working on if they don’t know what the goals are???

I’ve witnessed some version of this scenario at different organizations. Employees are confused or ambivalent about the goals you set, or oblivious to the impact on their day-to-day. If you’ve been / are in that situation, here are some thoughts on pitfalls to look out for and tips that might help when your goals are being:

1. Defined
2. Communicated
3. Prioritized

1. Definition

If you want the strategy and goals for your org to stick, they have to be easy to remember. They can’t be too long or too complex. Here are some temptations / tendencies to avoid:

• Your goal definitions are descriptive.?They try to convey ‘how’ and ‘why’ in addition to ‘what’. (e.g. Collaboratively and quickly improve and deliver X feature update.)
• Your goal definitions are compounded.?They combine what you want to achieve with the second order outcomes you imagine will be the result of that success. (e.g. Release X feature update in order to increase usability and enable customers to meet their targets.)
• Your goals aren’t specific or measurable.

As a team member, if a goal seems up for interpretation (i.e. it’s subjective), it will either mean nothing, or it will mean something unique to each person, and fail to create unity across the team.

Consider the following:

Use verbs and nouns, and avoid adjectives and adverbs.

• Fewer words mean more clarity on which words are important. No descriptors means clarity on what we’re tracking. I can focus on what I need to do rather than ruminating over how others think it should be done.

Contain your ambitions to one objective per goal, even if you anticipate positive follow-on effects

• The more ideas contained in one goal definition, the harder it is to remember.
• Second order outcomes distract from the objective that is most in your power to change, and obscure the key metrics.?
• Moreover, if you achieve the follow-on outcomes, but not the primary goal, how will you know if you succeed or fail??

Make trackability obvious

Instead of:?

“Collaboratively and quickly improve and deliver X feature update, in order to increase usability and enable customers to meet their targets.”

Try:

“Deliver X feature update by [DATE]”

Memorable. Specific. Measurable/Trackable. In your control.

But some points to note:?

Your tracking can and should include lagging indicators of success without cluttering the goal definition. E.g.

• Average time for users to complete Y activity
• % of customers who meet Z target?

When you define a goal for your organization, you make assumptions about the processes, culture, tools, etc. that underlie how you work.?

• Delivering X assumes adherence to product / engineering processes, documentation, roles & responsibilities, etc.
• Delivery assumes everyone knows the answer to “deliver to whom?”
• If you’ve had issues like poor collaboration, missed deadlines, or other operational trials, putting words like “collaboratively” and “quickly” into your goal definition will not address them.?

2. Communication

Setting goals is part of the job, but putting what you want to achieve into words doesn’t make it reality. People do that. They have unique ideas, expertise, and motivations driving their actions and they rely on you to align the team around a common goal.

Another pitfall leaders can stumble on is the assumption that simply declaring a clearly defined strategy makes it stick, or that it sticks in everyone’s head in the same way.

Unfortunately, this isn’t Hogwarts. And your strategy is not a spell that, when uttered, magically lines everyone up in the same direction and marching to the beat of your drum.

So what to do? Here are some tips:

Tell a good story:

Humans communicate meaning using stories. To coalesce around a collective goal, your team needs to digest backstory, conflict, reckoning, realization, and resolution. And nobody’s story matters more than your customer’s (though you can be a supporting character).?

I’d be willing to bet your bulleted list of quarterly goals won’t have a fraction of the staying power of a tale of good (your solution) vs. evil (your customer’s pain).

Show your work:

Your teams may benefit from seeing the cold, hard logic behind a strategic decision. Let simple Maths be your friend.?

Your success metric is a function of variables you can influence.?

Y = f(X)f(Z) e.g. Revenue = Volume x Price

X and Z, in turn, are functions of other factors, each of which is a potential lever you can pull.

X = f(P) + f(Q) + f(R) where P, Q and R are measures of stickiness of different features

Thus, you can show explicitly what variable your goal seeks to influence and why others are not in current focus. E.g. "Delivering feature updates affecting R enables price increase for lower risk than attempting to change price based on updates affecting P or Q."

Make it visual:

A picture is worth a thousand words. Need I say more?

Help your visual / spatial learners to grasp your meaning more easily. Is your key message the missing piece of a puzzle? The next link in the chain? The core from which results radiate? The foundation enabling great things to be built?

Illustrate what success looks like so others can see what you see.?

Over-communicate:

You spent days, maybe weeks, considering what comes next for your org. Your exec team has debated at length, mulled over data and subject matter expertise, weighed pros and cons. When you announce your strategy, it has been fully digested and internalized by your immediate team.

How much time will you give the rest of the org to do the same?

Another pitfall leaders face is the expectation of full internalization of a strategy and goals after one dedicated introduction. To counteract this: assume that talking about the strategy never ends until there’s a new one.

• Host standing strategy recap at every All Hands or functional management meeting.
• Discuss alignment at each leadership 1-on-1. Don’t pivot to discussing progress until alignment is firmly established.
• Show how the strategy is being implemented with every team spotlight.

Never miss an opportunity to work company strategy and goals into a message to the larger team.

Test your audience:

The effective communication of a strategy can seem like a constant soliloquy. And some leaders might be shocked and confused by the lack of understanding demonstrated by key members of the org after weeks, even months post strategy announcement / adoption.

So when you tell the story, show the math, make it visual, and over-communicate, be sure to ask for questions, AND pose your own.?

• Test the broader team’s understanding and adjust your delivery.?E.g. Do a live poll at All Hands, fireside chats, and any larger team gatherings?
• Dig deep into each function’s action plan, and ask them how it directly contributes
• Ask others to share how the strategy affects their purpose and day-to-day, i.e. ask them to tell their story

With all these in action, you demonstrate empathy for your team by taking time to explain. And you might just end up with the most strategically aligned team you’ve ever been a part of.?

3. Prioritization

Your org has the strategy. Everyone’s bought in. They’re eager. They believe.

But progress is still slow several weeks in and folks are slammed, weary, touchy about not being farther along. They ask for more time, more resources, and keep pushing out deadlines.

...And for the life of you, you can’t figure out what is so hard!!

This scenario is probably more common than most of us would like to admit, and there is no easy button that I know of that will get you out of it. But here are a few things to consider…

Behaviors have staying power.?

If you’re a young, growing company that’s changed tactics a few times, or pulled out all the stops for a powerful customer, the norms & processes that supported the company through those periods will be embedded with your teams.

• If a tactic was crucial to success 6 months ago (e.g. Give away freebies because we need new customers!), it doesn’t just disappear when things change. (e.g. No more freebies - customers should pay for all extras!).?
• That tactic must be identified as no longer relevant, and explicitly deprioritized and replaced with one that directly contributes to the current goals.

Put another way: if it isn’t ‘Hell, yes!’, it’s ‘No’.

The next step might be as simple as asking managers to lead this Yes / No exercise. Or it might require you to understand that folks made sacrifices to push a strategy forward. And it takes more than just an intellectual exercise to move on.

Ruthless prioritization is great when you’re in growth mode and moving fast, but not if it involves being ruthless to people.

Overhead and infrastructure

No matter what your business strategy is, short-, medium-, and long-term time horizons must be addressed. The cost of keeping the lights on, and avoiding cutting corners that could come back to bite you, will always be there. Balance with care.

Ensure key people are with you

You hired some very smart people with specific expertise. Their excellence in their fields means they might have motivations that transcend the business imperative of the moment. If you want to keep these experts, make sure they can do work they’re interested in. If you want them to help you with a specific goal, make it super clear why their involvement is paramount and craft a workstream specific to them. Your smartest people will not follow blindly.

Be honest about your constraints

This is probably the most difficult thing to avoid: biting off more than you can chew.

We all want to be ambitious, reach for the stars, change the world. That’s the promise of entrepreneurship. But when you have a few months and a few people to produce outcomes, your job is the unglamorous nitty gritty and uncompromising honesty of admitting what you cannot do.

Good news: The people who chose startup life do not need you to pile on the pressure with unachievable goals for them to work hard. They will do so anyway, and the company will succeed if the goals were thoughtfully, collaboratively, and honestly set.

So if your 5 goals for the quarter aren't seeing any progress, try focusing on just 1, and give it your all. Remember, you can always pivot next quarter…