crowdsource your strategy, from within the company...
Madhav Murti
Here’s a thought, probably novel to many and scary to more… how about opening up your strategy internally to all your employees and engaging them actively to develop/ validate/ shape and manage it?
The concept is not new and over the years several companies have attempted this to varying levels of success, from pure tokenism all the way to active engagement.
We recall some very early pioneers in this field of truly engaging employees in shaping the direction of and contributing to managing the business:
Despite being an easy practice to copy and with such apparent benefits, we see this happening more and more in smaller ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ companies and less and less in larger ‘established’ companies, which is interesting. You would think that the more established the company, greater the awareness of fully engaging and leveraging their own employee base but as we have seen, companies often pick up bad habits as they grow. These create all kinds of internal barriers to the free flow of ideas and engagement of the most valuable resource the company has access to, its employees.
In many companies strategy is still an executive privilege where it is set by a select few senior executives who own and sponsor various elements of business strategy and then sell it to the many. This approach is ancient and in severe need for an overhaul.
Why do it?
Increased alignment, shared understanding, enhanced commitment: For strategy to succeed, it is the many detailed activities and tasks that the organization has to orchestrate well to achieve expected outcomes. Having employees actively engaged is a great way of creating a very high level of alignment and ownership across the organization. This of-course would translate to increasing the chances of successful execution as not only do you have committed employees involved in executing ‘their’ strategy, you also get the best actionable insights around these from those closest to the action.
How?
One of the essential requirements of employee engagements is that you have to mean it. This requires that you have to be receptive to employees input and be transparent about how the engagement is handled. Herein probably lies your biggest challenge as this may involve behavior changes at various levels. Senior and middle management teams traditionally more involved in the strategy process may resist the potential loss of control over the strategy and employees whose input is being solicited may fear the consequences of being seen to challenge their leaders. It is key that at the outset the ‘rules of engagement’ are clearly defined that explain the objectives and the process and address any related concerns.
Leadership has to be visibly supportive of this new engagement process and adequately engaged to set the right tone. Jim Leech, former CEO of the Teachers’ Pension Plan addressed this by organizing think tank sessions where groups of 50 employees selected at random from across the organization were invited to work with him on ways to personalize the Vision and execute the Strategy. Sitting at the table with the CEO in small groups and providing direct input was a very powerful motivator for the staff to contribute and for Jim to get first hand feedback from those closest to the action.
Such involvement takes a significant level of commitment and sends a very powerful message. Depending on the organization’s readiness to embark on this level of engagement, it may be wise to structure it in small pilots to test the approach, tweak as required for further use and use as examples to scale up.
Ultimately, the more aligned the organization, more committed the employees, greater the chances of successful execution of your strategy. That's perhaps stating the obvious but would this work at your company?
The concept is not new and over the years several companies have attempted this to varying levels of success, from pure tokenism all the way to active engagement.
We recall some very early pioneers in this field of truly engaging employees in shaping the direction of and contributing to managing the business:
- Ricardo Semler and his very unique approach to involving employees at Semco to drive strategy and operations… check out Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace
- Jack Welch and his adventures at transformation at GE. GE’s Work-Out program is widely renowned for its approach to making Senior Executives answerable to employees from strategy to operations in a very transparent and often uncomfortable ways … check out Control your destiny or someone else will
Despite being an easy practice to copy and with such apparent benefits, we see this happening more and more in smaller ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ companies and less and less in larger ‘established’ companies, which is interesting. You would think that the more established the company, greater the awareness of fully engaging and leveraging their own employee base but as we have seen, companies often pick up bad habits as they grow. These create all kinds of internal barriers to the free flow of ideas and engagement of the most valuable resource the company has access to, its employees.
In many companies strategy is still an executive privilege where it is set by a select few senior executives who own and sponsor various elements of business strategy and then sell it to the many. This approach is ancient and in severe need for an overhaul.
Why do it?
Increased alignment, shared understanding, enhanced commitment: For strategy to succeed, it is the many detailed activities and tasks that the organization has to orchestrate well to achieve expected outcomes. Having employees actively engaged is a great way of creating a very high level of alignment and ownership across the organization. This of-course would translate to increasing the chances of successful execution as not only do you have committed employees involved in executing ‘their’ strategy, you also get the best actionable insights around these from those closest to the action.
How?
One of the essential requirements of employee engagements is that you have to mean it. This requires that you have to be receptive to employees input and be transparent about how the engagement is handled. Herein probably lies your biggest challenge as this may involve behavior changes at various levels. Senior and middle management teams traditionally more involved in the strategy process may resist the potential loss of control over the strategy and employees whose input is being solicited may fear the consequences of being seen to challenge their leaders. It is key that at the outset the ‘rules of engagement’ are clearly defined that explain the objectives and the process and address any related concerns.
Leadership has to be visibly supportive of this new engagement process and adequately engaged to set the right tone. Jim Leech, former CEO of the Teachers’ Pension Plan addressed this by organizing think tank sessions where groups of 50 employees selected at random from across the organization were invited to work with him on ways to personalize the Vision and execute the Strategy. Sitting at the table with the CEO in small groups and providing direct input was a very powerful motivator for the staff to contribute and for Jim to get first hand feedback from those closest to the action.
Such involvement takes a significant level of commitment and sends a very powerful message. Depending on the organization’s readiness to embark on this level of engagement, it may be wise to structure it in small pilots to test the approach, tweak as required for further use and use as examples to scale up.
Ultimately, the more aligned the organization, more committed the employees, greater the chances of successful execution of your strategy. That's perhaps stating the obvious but would this work at your company?