Over time, strategizing has become a buzzword and cliché that seem to have lost its meaning. As many times its usage in conversations has increased, the shallower its applications have become. What’s missing from the puzzle is synergy.
These terms are thrown around, but people and employees are hardly ever properly engaged with them. It is also one of the biggest reasons for the failure of many corporate strategies. According to recent figures,
95% of workforce don’t have an idea about the strategic aspect of their organizations.
How does this trend harm strategic management professionals and their plans? Let’s check out.
Involving People in Business Strategy – Why?
A participative approach to business success isn’t about looking good and just on the outside, but being thorough and robust from the inside. Informing or keeping employees in touch with your strategic direction:
- Keep employees motivated and engaged
- Build trust in the workforce
- Improve cohesion in the team
- Makes strategy execution easier
- Brings out a through strategic plan, and more.
Signs Your Is Strategy Made in Vacuum
Business strategies are created on the executive-level. The strategic planning is usually done at the top executive level either by the CEO herself or entrusting someone experienced and trusted to do the job such as employing a Global Business Strategy Leader or a Chief Strategist Office (CSO).
That also sounds rational, but the process leaves a lot of dark corners that bring out people’s lackadaisical attitude to change. One way is to involve employees in the process, and the other is to keep them in the information loop to keep the enthusiasm intact.
If you aren’t taking any of the two approaches in strategy building, it means the project suffers from people’s confidence.
3 Ways to Encourage Employee Participation
Strategic management professionals can use these routes to make strategizing more fluid and familiar to employees.
1. Integrated departmental working
Often people within an organization work in silos. Integrating decision making and functions can increase productivity and make a plan resilient to disruptions. Working as a team brings cohesion and the sudden unavailability of a resource doesn’t adversely harm the project. It will help employees quickly relate to strategic plans and act accordingly.
Furthermore, it involves hiring for a reason. If four of your 10 hires surf social media most day, that indicates you need better planning on hiring.
These steps will improve strategic planning and execution to a large extent.
2. Teach by doing
Taking from the success of the best strategists, the perfect way to set an example is by showing it in practice. Senior leaders, global business strategy leaders, and CSOs must take the first step in lending meaning to these buzzwords.
Make the deals, forge the relationships in the outside world, and then share it with your workforce by updating them on the new priorities and developments. Doing this will change the relevance of strategizing for people by lending it a real meaning to it.
Give stats. “This was a good year because…,” and so on.
3. Align people with priorities and plans
While employees may feel their job roles and descriptions to be static most of the time, the overall business developments remain dynamic. To bring an employee understanding from static to dynamic requires for HRs and strategic management professionals to reorganize priorities in a way to align it with employees. If need be, make the responsibilities fluid and bring about process-laden employee development.
If you plan for your employees to achieve your next five-year business goals, you first need to create a mechanism to inform them about the company’s goals and strategy. And then begin a conversation around it. Are you ready to involve employees in your business strategy?
