Without committed and effective execution, no strategy is a good strategy. If your people are not fully engaged and motivated about the strategy then you have poor, delayed and half-hearted execution.
So what’s the best way to motivate and engage your people to implement the strategy? It comes down to approaching strategy development the same way you would approach any major transformation. You need to humanise the process from the start.
People become unmotivated and disengaged about any change when they feel unsure about the answers to the following questions:
Can I do this?
What’s the process?
What will happen?
Do I get a say in this?
Are my views respected?
Is it fair?
When we design a strategic process that addresses these fears then we bake in motivation and engagement from the start.
But it’s not enough to simply remove fears, we also need to build people’s confidence and positive emotions.
When we address the concerns, raise confidence and build positive emotions as we go through the strategy development process then there is no need to get “buy-in” or try to influence, the energy and motivation are already there, ready to go into execution. In addition, you get to leverage the collective wisdom and intelligence of all your people, not just a select few.
Here is how to do this, adapted from the great work by Dan and Chip in their book Switch, (this is my go-to change management book for any type of change):
Shrink the change:
Take a bite-size approach to build the strategic thinking muscle of your entire organisation. Get everyone using strategic thinking tools, step by step, in a manageable way that makes sense to their role and work.
Grow your people:
As people become more confident using strategic thinking tools they start to change the view of themselves: they become strategists. Positive emotions flow from this confidence and personal growth. From an organisational perspective, this builds collective wisdom, generates better decisions and infuses commitment from the very people that will be executing the strategy later on.
Get everyone involved:
As well as using strategic thinking tools everyone should be encouraged to do first-hand research. Watching customers, using the products or services themselves, and asking non-customers for insights. This puts direct experience into the hands of all your people, they know at a deep level what the customer issues are. Once people experience the need to change there is less need to influence, convince or try to get buy-in.
As your people use the tools and talk to customers, and non-customers, they will have many insights to share. Create easy ways for them to do this. Encouraging everyone to come into a chosen hub (a dedicated strategy room, or virtual space) to share their insights and read those from others is a great way to build community around the process.
Set clear expectations:
Clearly communicate what people can expect at each step of the process by sharing a roadmap of the strategy development process. This creates some certainty for people in times of uncertainty. Lay out the expectations on their input and involvement.
Give clear explanations:
All leaders need to be able to explain clearly why you are doing this, what the process is, why this is the process and, later on, what the resulting chosen strategy is and why. Almost always people can get behind a decision once they understand why and how it was made, as long as their input was invited, respected and considered.
Each of these steps makes for an inclusive and fair process of strategy development.
Bringing people along the journey of formulating strategy works so well because people feel intellectually and emotionally valued. This in turn makes people feel motivated to go above and beyond, even if their particular ideas were not taken up, they feel included and committed to the approach.
It’s an approach that taps into our innate human need for fairness, inclusion, and respect whilst balancing creativity with certainty.
By approaching strategy this way and encouraging everyone in the organisation to be part of the process, it bakes in better decisions, engagement, readiness and motivation for execution. You have multiplied the strategic capability of your organisation from a small handful to the whole organisation. As you move to execution you have a whole organisation moving in the same direction, committed and motivated. That’s pretty powerful.
For support in how to motivate and engage your people to implement the strategy, and upskill your teams in the strategic thinking tools, contact me at Sarah Robertson Consulting or book a discovery call
