Will Your Strategy Succeed? Start By Asking Your Team These Two Questions

You’ve done it!  You and your leadership team have just finished polishing off that shiny new strategy that will take your organization to the next level.  And yet, now that you’re ready to put it into action, you can’t shake the nagging question: what’s the probability it will succeed?  How do you know your strategic planning process wasn’t just a colossal waste of time and resources? 

Luckily there is a simple two-part test you can ask your team to help you answer that question.   

Question 1: What is the strategy? 

On the surface this question seems fairly ridiculous; the team just spent weeks or even months on it, surely they know what the strategy is.  While they can probably rattle off the organization’s “Five Strategic Pillars”, or however they’ve been categorized, has the team really internalized the strategy?  Do they all have the same understanding of the pillars, of “Customer Centricity,” for example?  Or are they simply generic pablum; “motherhood and apple pie”?   

Are they clear what the organization has decided not to do, or is the strategy the result of a series of compromises that have ensured that no real choices have been made, and will therefore inspire no meaningful change?  With this question you are trying to ensure that the team is focused on the same strategic choices and are aligned on what those choices really mean for the organization. 

Question 2: What does it mean for me?  

This is the more difficult of the two questions.  Even if the leadership team fully understands the strategy, do they know specifically how it affects them as individuals?  When they come into the office tomorrow, will they know how their daily behaviors, their operational choices, need to change as a result of that strategy? 

This is the critical challenge because ultimately driving strategic change is about driving behavioral change; it’s about doing things differently.  Sound strategies often fail not because they had the wrong processes or systems in place, but because people didn’t understand their role in executing it.  Make sure to articulate the case for change – why is it important to the organization?  How will it impact them personally?  How are they and their teams going to be held accountable for executing the strategy?   

When the team understands the strategy and what it means for them, that is the tipping point to make the strategy not just a leadership directive, but a guiding light for everyone’s daily behavior.