In the current environment, leaders tend to be well aware of the need to engage their workforce in the strategy created by the organisations leaders. They seek to engage to ensure their teams have the same understanding as them and they can see why their efforts will contribute to its achievement and consequently, how they will benefit.

Despite this, there is clear evidence of a disconnect between the executive’s intentions and both the understanding of them and the actual activity occurring on the ground. While there is always a level of us versus them and an expectation of differing perspectives, it is fair to say that an organisational strategy is one of the most frequently communicated items and hence the chance of misinterpretation should be reasonably low.

So, how does this process uncouple and how can it be repaired?

Uncoupling via dilution and distraction

Two common reasons for confusion are dilution and distraction.

By dilution I mean departments supplementing the strategy with supporting elements that reduce the ability of the audience to remember the actual strategy. These supplements come in the form of strategic priorities, strategic initiatives, frameworks, and objectives. While the intent is likely the notion of making a connection between the strategy and important drivers for the local department, the effect is often an overload of the ability to keep this all at the front of mind, in addition to confusion regarding which element is more important. Critically, it also opens the concepts up for even more interpretation and dilution as they are passed down the line.

Distraction is more about personal styles. It usually makes sense for leaders to personalise a message so that their audience will recognise consistency in the way they deliver a message and how it sits with their established values. But – this increases the likelihood of messaging changing to suit their style and their local agenda. In time this means that the overall strategy is seen a bit differently, it’s discussed in a varied way and it will likely be implemented according to local interpretation.

According to a recent study conducted by Donald Sull (and cited in the Harvard Business Review), found that while 90% of middle managers believe Executives actually communicate the strategy enough, 25% believe that they change their messages too frequently (which leads to confusion) and only 55% of these middle managers can name 1 of their company’s top 5 priorities.

So – how can this disconnect be prevented or proactively managed?

Contribution, testing and coaching to guide your outputs

The first way to ensure a connection with a strategic message is to give your wider workforce and chance to help build it. This can be done via planned team discussion and surveys. Understanding is always unique to an individual, but if they can see something grow over time and they have been a part of it, they are much more likely to connect with it.

The second way to manage your message is to test it. Again, surveying is a useful way to bunce concepts off your workforce and see what comes back. Focus groups would be even better, as long as they are truly representative of the workforce as a whole. External testing would also be useful to understand how the messaging is seen by the customers, as this will affect the ongoing perceptions of your own people.

The final step is coaching. It is a good idea for the executive group to collectively agree how they will speak to the strategy, how a discussion will be structured and supporting messages for each section. Then, in a similar manner to media training, each leader can be coached on their delivery via practice and refinement. Similarly, they would be well placed to pass on this coaching to their teams to manage the message through the ranks.

In summary, the effort to manage the message content and delivery is well justified given the huge effort required to create a strategy and the significant benefits of delivering as planned in each part of your business.