77 | Connecting Your People To Your Organisational Strategy | BBC Shorts

Let's talk a little bit about strategy. It's a necessary evil. It's necessary because we want to know where our businesses are going. We need to be able to let people know where we're going and how we're going to get there and the part they'll play in getting us there, particularly internally. But the evil of the necessary evil, of course, is that they're just not written in language that compels people to want to get on the bus you need them to get on if you're to make that strategy successful. They're not written in a way that captures hearts and minds. Often it's numbers and charts and KPIs and what we need to get done, not why we need to get it done or how. We're going to get it done. So for me, translating that strategy into something that your staff, your employees, your colleagues can really get their teeth into makes all the difference. For me, a really important way of doing that is through story, through corporate narrative or storyboard or whatever you might want to call it, but telling your strategic story in a way that makes it that little bit more compelling for your people, that explains in pictures and in words particularly what it is you need them to do, where you're going as an organization, and the role that they're going to play in getting you there. It's about creating something that resonates in people's hearts as well as in their minds. And I think of a story, whether it's a corporate narrative story or any kind of story, in exactly that format, as, as chapters of a story. And for me, a really good corporate narrative has 5 clear chapters. Chapter 1: Where have we come from and what makes us great? What are we proud of? What's made this organization successful? Where does that pride come from, and where are some stories and examples of where we've made a real difference? Number 2: What we might like to term the burning platform. Why do we need to change as an organization? Why do we need this strategy? What are some of the things— what are some of the challenges that it's going to help us overcome? And moreover, rather than focusing just on the burning platform, what are some of the opportunities? How will this change of strategy, this change of tack, the change of direction, help us to be better? Help us to be better people in the organization and help us to better serve our customers, to make us more relevant in the world? Chapter 3, the strategy. What are we actually going to do? How are we going to get there? We've painted a picture of why we need to change. Now we're going to give a bit of insight, a bit of background as to the specifics around what it is we're going to be doing. Chapter 4, really important, and for me this is the killer chapter. The role that your people are going to play in getting you there, what you need them to do differently. Maybe what you need them to start, stop, and continue doing is a model that we like to use in workshops. But helping them to understand the things that they can do to help you progress, the things that they can do to help make that strategy successful, how they live your values, how they live your behaviors, the types of things that you expect your leaders to be doing, what's going to work and what isn't, and telling that in a very, very clear way so that everybody in your organization can see the red thread between what they're doing in their frontline roles, or perhaps in their senior management roles, and how that impacts on delivering this overall strategy. We often think, particularly in bigger organizations, that sure, everybody knows what's going on, everybody knows what the strategy is, everybody can see that red thread. And in fact, they can't. It's very hard for them, very, very hard for people to see unless you show them, unless you link and label between people's roles and the overall strategy. It's really hard for them to see the part they play in delivering that strategy on the organization's behalf. Finally, we want to show them a bright future. We want to say to people, if we get all this right, here's the prize, here's what's available, here's what our future is going to look like, and boy is that exciting. Here's what it's going to mean, and here is what it's going to feel like. Here's the difference that we will have made. It's not long, it's a couple of hundred words. If you wrote it out on an A4 page, it's maybe a couple of slides, that's all. It's not your 30 or 40 or 50-page PowerPoint document of, of charts and words. It's very short, it's very concise, but it's written in language that is very emotive and connects with your people. And once you have it, once you've created that and it looks lovely and it sounds fantastic, hand it over to your leaders. Hand it over to the organization. Let them take it and run with it. Let your leaders bring it to their teams and have a conversation about what does this mean for us, what do we have to do differently, what's the role that we play in driving this strategy forward, and how can we be really effective in supporting each other and the company in being successful. So if you are thinking about strategy at the moment, then absolutely think about corporate narrative, because it's the way that you're going to bridge the gap between what your company has to and how your people are going to help you achieve it. Thanks and see you again soon.