How to empower your people to deliver your Business Plan

Leaders, are you doing enough to empower your people to deliver on your Business Plan?

Brightline has published an excellent set of 10 guiding principles to bridge the ubiquitous gap between strategy design, execution and delivery, and we think it should be required reading for all leaders. The Brightline Initiative™ is a coalition of leading global organizations assembled by the Project Management Institute (PMI), dedicated to, in their words, "helping executives bridge the expensive and unproductive gap between strategy design and delivery."

We’re particularly pleased that point 6 “promoting team engagement and effective cross-business co-operation”, highlights the importance of communicating and sharing the business strategy with the wider organisation.

Are you doing enough to engage your employees with your Business' strategy?  According to Six Disciplines, most organizations suffer a major disconnect between strategy formulation and its execution

  • 95% of employees do not understand their organisations strategy, and;
  • only 27% of a typical company's employees have access to its strategic plan.

These scary statistics reinforce the need for greater cross-business collaboration in strategy execution and delivery.

Expanding on the Brightline 10 guiding principles, on point 6 they say

“Beware of the ‘frozen middle’! Gain genuine buy-in from middle and line managers by engaging and activating them as strategy champions rather than just as managers and supervisors. Don’t just assume your people will “get it” — leadership must firmly establish a shared commitment to strategy-delivery priorities and regularly reinforce it. This isn’t the time or place for subtlety. Govern through transparency to engender trust and enhance cross-business cooperation in delivery".

This gets to the heart of one of the common business challenges in strategy execution; the lack of alignment of expectations between the board, the C-Level and the rest of the organisation.  It acknowledges the difficulty of communicating the strategy clearly and consistently, across the Business and engaging with the organisation to execute and deliver a business strategy.

At EXM we go a step further and believe it is not just the “frozen middle” that needs to be on-board with the strategy.  Everyone in the organisation needs to understand it, be engaged with it and feel empowered to achieve the Business Plan and to succeed. Having a clear and consistent message is essential.

We recognise that CEOs and Senior Executives need the ability to quickly and easily manage the execution of their strategy, communicate it internally and empower team members by giving them ownership and responsibility of individual objectives, encouraging them to make a difference.  

That’s why connecting the Value-Creation Plan to the rest of the organisation by sharing it across the Business is included in our 9 steps to perfect strategy execution and control.

According to  Harvard Business White Paper Why Strategy Alignment Matters-and How to Achieve It "regardless of the nature and direction of a strategic change an organisation wants to make, Senior leaders must be aligned with it" 

It's great to see sharing the business strategy with the organisation recognised as an important part of executing an organisations strategy and acknowledgement that delivering on a business plan is the responsibility of every individual.

By building in these capabilities they can serve not only to realise your strategy today but also help you to build capabilities for future strategies.

Want to empower your people to achieve your Business Plan?

  1. Leaders establish a shared commitment to strategy delivery
  2. Maintain transparency and engender trust
  3. Communicate the strategy clearly
  4. Make sure everyone understands the strategy
  5. Engender empowerment
  6. Create a winning culture

What Next?

Could the right strategy execution solution help you reach your strategy execution goals?  UNTAP by EXM is a powerful strategy execution solution that

  • Can turn your beautiful strategy slide deck into something tangible that your teams can deliver.
  • Puts focus on translating the CEO’s big ideas into a set of projects that make it real.
  • Gives team members the ability to measure their contribution in real-time. 
  • Provides the vital link between the formulation of your strategy and its effective execution.

Are you ready to take the next steps in developing the digital fitness to transform your strategy execution capabilities?  Download our brochure today to learn more about our digital solution to translate your Company's strategy into an executable ‘Value-Creation Plan.

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