Why setting Context is a critical leadership task

Proper context setting is the key to ensure alignment between corporate strategy and the decisions that employees make throughout the organization.

Context is essential because most jobs are so compartmentalized that employees often lack the broader perspective of how their work impacts the work of others and the achievement of strategic goals. Therefore, by explaining how daily tasks fit into a broader context, managers can give their teams valuable information that they can use to make better decisions.

The purpose of setting Context is to:

• Empower employees by ensuring that they understand How their goals and accountabilities fit into the larger picture, Why they are doing what they are doing, and What is the rationale for making decisions. In other words, employees benefit by having a shared understanding of the overall strategy or plan, and using it as a basis for team and individual decisions. This understanding allows them to use their judgment and creativity in order to make better decisions that are aligned with their manager’s and the corporate strategy, and that take into consideration the systemic impact of different choices. This is especially important when decisions involve trade-offs (as many complex decisions do). For example, how is an employee expected to know what goal or task is more important or urgent, if they don't understand the systemic impact of the decisions they have to make? Thus, setting good context also relieves managers from the need to micro-manage their teams.
• Build commitment by connecting the work that employees are doing with a larger purpose and goal that hopefully they believe in and support.
• Inform employees who need to work collaboratively in teams, about how they are expected to deliver on their own individual goals in such a way that supports the best outcome for a whole team.

How to set Context

Context starts at the top of the organization and cascades down by adjusting its scope as it moves through each level.?Managers at all levels set context by explaining and communicating to their direct reports, the upward, team-working, cross-functional, and sometimes environmental contexts, modifying and adjusting them as necessary.

In order to strengthen this process, managers need to:

• Bring their teams together at regular intervals to update them and ensure that initiatives and projects are aligned with the overall strategy. Employees also benefit from hearing directly from senior leaders to understand the broader company strategy, and to build trust and confidence in the leadership team.?
• Gather feedback from their teams about their insights, concerns, opportunities, obstacles and risks in implementing initiatives and projects. When this feedback is communicated upwards it can inform and enrich strategy design and deployment, and the quality of the context setting.

The four types of Context

A) Upward context. A review of the mission and major strategy of the organization, the business unit or functional area, as well as the manager’s own vision, goals, challenges and plan for addressing them. The goal is to communicate why the work that the direct reports are doing is important or matters to the organization and to the manager, and how its fulfillment will make a difference.

B) Immediate teamworking context. Everyone in the team ought to know what the other team members are doing and what they are accountable for. Moreover, the manager needs to describe the main interactions likely to be required between the direct reports, and the reasoning within which they must find integrative solutions to problems of lateral process flows. In other words, the manager needs to communicate clearly to their direct reports, how they expect them to deliver on their own individual goals in such a way that supports the best outcome for the whole team.

C) Cross-functional teamworking context. Unclear cross-functional teamworking context is one of the most common sources of friction in organizations. How to address this problem is covered in my article "How to improve cross-functional collaboration in the workplace".

D) Environmental context. In order to make good decisions, senior level roles in particular often need to be aware of what is happening in the organization's external environment. This may include knowing what competitors and other businesses are doing, and being well informed about economic, social and cultural trends, political events, and scientific and technological breakthroughs. Managers need to be proactive in seeking to understand this context in order to improve their judgment when making important strategic decisions, and to share their insights with their direct reports as needed.