Tactics for Communicating Strategy Well
I have previously talked about the benefits of having a simple and focused strategy. Of course, simple is different from simplistic. Even simple strategies come from rigorous and nuanced analysis—it’s actually quite complex!
But the reason the nuanced strategy needs to synthesize into simplicity is that human beings need to coordinate to effectively implement it. Hence, a cousin to having a simple strategy is having simple communication from leaders about it.
Unfortunately, many organizations don’t get this right. In Unleashed, Frances Frei and Anne Morriss write:
“This scale of leadership depends on people understanding the strategy well enough to inform their own decisions with it. In our experience, too many companies are held back by strategic confusion below the most senior ranks. Said differently, strategy guides discretionary behavior to the limit of how well you communicate it.”
What’s worth underlining in that passage is “strategic confusion below the senior ranks.” That is, even if the strategy is clear, common knowledge of it may not be.
One of the basic things that gets in the way of clarity is jargon and fancy talk. Chip and Dan Heath put this well in Made to Stick: “To a CEO, ‘maximizing shareholder value’ may be an immensely useful rule of behavior. To a flight attendant, it’s not.”
In The Knowing-Doing Gap, professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton write: “Managers are often just as guilty as academics of using complex, incomprehensible jargon to express ideas that could be expressed in simple language.”
In contrast, they write, “Simple talk is valuable because it is more likely to lead to action. It is less possible to second-guess or dispute simple, direct ideas. One may disagree with a simple idea or a simple philosophy, but that is transparent at the outset.”
Here, the literature argues for strategy communications that sound simple and are clear enough to guide people to the right actions without precise direction.
1. Articulate a Strategic Principle.
A framing for this that I really like is the strategic principle. In the Harvard Business Review article “Transforming Corner-Office Strategy into Frontline Action,” Bain & Company consultants Orit Gadiesh and James Gilbert define the strategic principle as “a memorable and actionable phrase that distills a company’s corporate strategy into its unique essence and communicates it throughout the organization.”
One example they give is from Walmart: “Low prices, every day.” Another is from GE: “Be number one or number two in every industry in which we compete, or get out.”
While the phrases are simple, they reflect complex thinking. The GE strategic principle, for example, could just as soon be written as: As a conglomerate, our only rationale for being in an industry has to be that we have the capabilities required to be number one or number two. Else, it’s not an optimal use of investment capital, and we should get out of that industry.
But that doesn’t fit on a poster.
At the same time, strategic principles provide direction that everyone in the organization can understand and act upon.
Another way to think about the principle is what you might say at the end of a long speech on the strategy. And it’d probably include a phrase like When in doubt ... or All else equal... or If you could only prioritize one thing….
A classic example of this is British Admiral Horatio Nelson’s instructions to his fleet before the Battle of Trafalgar: “But, in case Signals can neither be seen or perfectly understood, no Captain can do very wrong if he places his Ship alongside that of an Enemy.”
Translation: In the absence of further instruction, just get aggressive.
In Practice: What A Simple Message Looks Like
In Made to Stick, the authors suggest that “Simple = Core + Compact.”
In Making Great Strategy, professors Jesper Sorensen and Glenn Carroll write: “A strategy message should be accessible and comprehensible to all, which means it needs to be simple and direct.”
For me, the test is to explain your team or organization’s strategy to someone who has no clue what you do. Then, ask if they understand it. If not, it’s probably not as clear or simple as you need it to be.
2. Find a focusing question.
McKinsey & Company senior partners Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra write in CEO Excellence that “the best CEOs invariably dwell on the elements that will make the biggest difference and encapsulate those in a pithy word or phrase that they consistently invoke.”
One clear forum for this is in formal routines. Naturally, the routines should be designed so that the most important questions are asked directly. For example, if you ask leaders in operational reviews to regularly report on what they’re doing to improve employee experience, they are likely to stay focused on that. No one wants to look like they’re slacking in front of their peers!
Still, leaders can voice this focus directly. In CEO Excellence, the authors quote Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, describing how he reinforces strategy themes in review conversations. “If ‘Asia Pacific–first’ is one of our five themes, I could be in a YouTube review and probe the team: ‘Can you tell me how you’re solving for Asia Pacific first?’ ”
Leaders can also take this approach in their wider interactions with employees. Again, from Dewar, Keller, and Malhotra:
“A less obvious but extremely powerful tool we’ve seen CEOs use is turning their cultural themes into questions. At Siam Cement, Kan Trakulhoon used this approach to bolster his culture of innovation. As he visited various sites, he always made it a point while on the shop floor to ask, ‘What are you working on to improve your process and your productivity?’ [...] When he came back for his next visit, however, you can bet everyone on the shop floor was ready with an impressive answer.”
I really like that last part. The question engaged everyone in the strategy. Like the strategic principle, this is a tool for converting the strategy from “something senior leaders are doing” to “something you, an employee in the organization, is contributing to.”
3. Be prepared to repeat yourself.
Richard Buery Jr., former CEO of Children’s Aid Society, articulated this tactic well. He was asked in an interview: “What lessons have you picked up from your mentors?”
His answer: “I’m used to roles where if I wanted to talk to everybody, I could actually talk to everybody, and that’s no longer possible. So just the importance of being clear and concise in your communication — not 10 messages, but two or three messages repeated over and over and over again in every way you can and every opportunity you have.”
Sustaining attention on the strategy often requires repeating oneself over and over. This takes discipline for leaders, since it can get boring. But the return from that discipline is that after hearing the same message multiple times, employees and external stakeholders are much more likely to understand the direction and their role in making the strategy a reality.
4. Engage beyond your direct team.
This offers multiple benefits. First, by engaging with a wider group of leaders—both individually and in group settings—leaders can avoid the game of Telephone which can lead to their messages being altered. Second, these meetings can also be a critical check that subordinate leaders are taking the steps required to implement the strategy. And finally, they can be helpful in spotting up-and-coming leaders for succession purposes.
CEO Excellence provides several good examples of this. For example, the authors share this strategy from U.S. Bancorp’s Richard Davis: “I reached out to a remarkable number of employees. Our pyramid had twelve direct reports to the CEO, seventy-six two levels down and 220 three levels down. And I certainly knew everyone by name and found it was important to connect directly with them versus working through the hierarchy. No one was afraid to have me go around them to a direct report to mentor them or expose them to something.”
Lynn Good of Duke Energy has a similarly intense approach. “I make a concerted effort to spend time with my direct reports, their direct reports, as well as the people who run large operations. I get them together for an hour and a half each month on strategic topics. We get together once a quarter for a longer session. We get together once a year for a day and a half. Timely, transparent communications are important to build trust and confidence among the leadership team.”
When I share the above examples with clients, the first reaction is usually “That sounds like a lot of meetings!”
I agree.
But when one thinks of the levers that leaders actually have available to pull, this kind of direct engagement is one of the few tools that are fully in their control to influence outcomes.