Live strong – living up to the strategy

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• October 27, 2010
• Tor Inge Vasshus

Are your employees living up to the strategy of the company? If not – they are not alone. Only 5% of employees understand the company’s strategy and hence, they are not able to live up to the strategy.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately. Why are the key employees and the most skilled people not actively involved in shaping the strategy and why are they not empowered to implement the strategy? I believe this is because we don’t focus on it or have good processes in place.
I think there are some issues that companies need to overcome in order to get their employees more involved –

• Create a common language of Strategy between the management and the workforce
• Establish processes and meeting opportunities for strategy discussions
• Appreciate workers’ involvement. Let them challenge you as a manager and let them “pull the strategy” (instead of you trying to push the strategy on them)
• Recognize their inputs

In short, if you want your employees to “live up to the strategy”, most of you will have to change the way you work on these issues today.