Ideally, you involve your employees from the very beginning when developing a strategy. Sometimes, however, you have to choose to do so only at a later stage. Doomed to fail? Certainly not! In this article, Casper Hendriks and Arjen Verwer, management consultants at Summiteers, explain how we helped one of our clients transform a strategy developed in “splendid isolation” into a living strategy that is widely supported by all employees.

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The Deliberate Choice for Top-Down Strategy Development

Dolf already wrote about this earlier in a blog: anyone who wants to successfully develop a strategy would do well to involve employees from the start. This immediately creates buy-in, while also taking the feasibility of the strategy into account from the beginning and therefore improving the quality of the plan. But sometimes the urgency is so great that you may still decide to do things differently. Last year, the new CEO of an organization engaged us. One of his observations was that the organization lacked a clear strategy. This resulted in an organization that was working on everything at once without clear direction or priorities. As a result, a lot of time was spent “putting out fires”, both by the management team and by employees. In addition, employees indicated that management was not providing direction or setting priorities. The context of this organization made the need to quickly determine direction significant. The strategy had to be ready for the budgeting process for the coming year, so there was a need to quickly align management and move out of firefighting mode. In addition, there was little room to free up employees in the short term. In consultation with the management team, we therefore consciously decided to initially start the strategy process with them, meaning with limited involvement from the rest of the organization. In a number of intensive sessions, we developed the mission and vision, clear objectives, and strategic plans for how to achieve them. In this way, we helped management get a clear strategy in place within one quarter, start providing direction, and bring focus to the activities of their teams.

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Direction, But No Buy-In

Employees were therefore hardly involved in shaping that strategy. Although the management team had explained the strategy to their teams and gathered some input before the joint strategy workshops, that alone does not create buy-in. In short: there was a need to catch up and create that buy-in after all. This was confirmed when we conducted an organizational scan during an employee session in January. Employees indicated that they did not really know what the strategy entailed. They felt only limited connection to the new strategic goals and had little visibility into the initiatives to realize them. In other words, employees confirmed how crucial it is to pay attention to this buy-in. Ultimately, employees are essential for the effective implementation of any strategy.

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From Dissatisfaction to Enthusiasm

That is why, in the second employee session, we focused entirely on the plan. This meant thoroughly working through the strategy with all employees, both in plenary sessions and in break-out groups. In the break-outs, everyone had the opportunity to ask questions about the objectives and strategic plans, and to enter into an open dialogue with the people who had created those plans: the management team. During these interactions, new insights and enrichments of the strategic plans emerged. It was therefore truly a dialogue, not merely one-way communication from management. In addition to answering questions, the management team members collected all feedback and ideas, and shared a summary with everyone at the end of the day. In this way, the strategic plans were further enriched based on employee input. And it had an effect. The day ended with a completely different atmosphere from the beginning: the initial dissatisfaction had turned into enthusiasm. Employees were positive and felt connected, not only to the strategy, but also to each other and to management.

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Plans for the Future

Now that the strategy is widely supported, the organization naturally wants to maintain and further build on that involvement. A strategy cycle has been developed for both the short and long term. Because the strategy has been translated into a multi-year roadmap, an annual plan, and quarterly plans at both team and individual level, every employee knows what their contribution is to the bigger picture. During each quarter, bottlenecks are discussed and resolved in stand-ups. The strategy is recalibrated annually to keep it alive and relevant, and to translate it into the annual plan and budget for the coming year. Employees are encouraged to show leadership in initiatives that support the strategic goals, either by making suggestions themselves or by taking on a project lead role. This not only benefits the execution of the strategy, but also strengthens their personal involvement and development.

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Need Help with Strategy and Execution?

We are Summiteers. We create movement, make what is complex understandable again, make big things manageable, turn a - vague - idea into something concrete, and make difficult things succeed. Could you use help with this? Get in contact with us.

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