The Orange Chair Online

Ten most common mistakes CEOs make in communicating strategy

 By Nicky Fried

It’s been six months of hard work, time and energy, the results are outstanding and you and your executive are looking forward to seeing your strategic plan implemented. Nine months down the road you are disappointed and frustrated. The new plan is not having the results you would like to see. Employees don’t seem to understand or care. It’s a great plan but it’s not getting any traction.

You are not alone. Seventy percent of change plans fail, not because they aren’t good, but because the people who must execute them don’t feel engaged. To fully engage employees you will need to actively communicate.

Here are the 10 most common mistakes CEOs make in communicating strategy:

1. Not having an engagement/communication plan. Any important initiative needs a plan. You have put a lot of effort into the development so make sure an equal amount goes into the execution.

Solution: Work with your communication team to develop a clear plan that targets different groups and maps out strategies, tactics and messages.

2. Leaving it up to someone else. You own the plan. No one else has the same passion for it. How can you expect them to communicate as effectively as you?

Solution: Show you are committed and get out and communicate. Your employees will respond to your passion and understand this is important to the organization, through your behaviour. You need to be a key tactic in the communication plan. You are after all the Chief Engagement Officer!

3. Trying to be someone else in communicating the plan. Don’t try and communicate in a style that doesn’t work to your best advantage.

Solution: Use your personal style to your advantage in communicating to staff. If you are an outstanding one-on-one communicator then set up a series of meetings that allow you to communicate in this way.

4. Not taking time to simplify the message so everyone can understand it. Remember only you and the executive worked on it for six months.

Solution: Work with your communication department to create key messages and graphics that clarify and communicate the plan so everyone can understand and relate to it.

5. Sending out the same message to everyone. Different areas will need to interpret the strategic plan in different ways.

Solution: Personalize your message to different departments so that they can begin the work of interpreting it for their area.

6. Not being available to answer questions about the plan. This is not about telling – it’s about engaging and helping people understand their role in the plan.

Solution: If you are holding group meetings, assign a large portion of session for questions. Host a blog where people can interact with you. Cancel appointments and open your door to employees.

7. Not making your communication objectives clear to managers on how they must communicate the plan to their employees.

Solution: Set clear and measurable communication objectives for managers on communicating e.g. “the plan will be communicated to all your staff by July 15”.

8. Not supporting managers with appropriate materials so they can communicate to their staff.

Solution: Develop discussion guides and Q/As so managers can fully discuss the strategic plan and help employees understand how they support it.

9. Not measuring the success of communication throughout the organization. How do you know your efforts are working?

Solution: Phone surveys to random employees to see if they have been communicated to and understand the gist of the communication.

10. Not communicating early wins. Employees need to see the new behaviours in action so they can understand what they need to do.

Solution: Know who your early adopters are and make sure their successes are fully communicated.

Feathers are soft; communication is a hard core management skill

 

Recently I came across Ten Tips on how to help your employees manage change in uncertain times from Towers Perrin. It’s good sensible advice like, have a strategy for uncertain times and communicate your strategy effectively. And, help employees understand the context they function within, let them know they area valued and give them an opportunity to air concerns. Have a look at them – I’m sure you will find them useful.

 

What intrigued me was the fact that the majority of the tips are communication related. We know that organizations that practice effective internal communication financially outperform those that don’t; up to 29.5% increase in market value and 50% higher shareholder returns. Impressive!

 

I don’t know why people call communication a ‘soft’ skill. Soft suggests something lightweight – like feathers. And feathers have a horrible habit of flying all over the place and being difficult to catch. I like to believe that we can be more targeted and deliberate with our communications. My business partner refers to communication as a fundamental management skill - a far more appropriate term, don’t you think?

 

Why people and engagement matter

This video was first produced in 2007. I came across it in my files and was reminded of why I feel so strongly about what I do, and the importance of engaging employees in the organizational journey. I hope you enjoy it.

Facilitate ldeader communications for engaged employees

Imagine every manager in your organization fully understanding the communication role they play within the organization? And now imagine those managers with all the necessary tools and process at hand to be highly effective communicators?

My friend and client, Susan, who heads up internal communication for a financial institution, is doing just that and creating communication leaders within her company.

Susan has documented all the communication processes from the point of view of the manager. In addition she has developed a series of simple tools to help leaders take control of those processes in their areas. She is sharing this material in management meetings throughout the organization, and empowering managers to take control of the communication process.

Twenty years ago communicators produced the goods. Today we facilitate the discussion and it’s an exciting place to be.

Saying thank you still the best way to engage

I am in the process of developing a Webinar on leadership communications. There are a number of cool things about the technology, such as being able to hold random polls at any point during the presentation, share multiple documents, work on a whiteboard as a group and surf the web. But my favourite is the thumbs up button. How wonderful to be able to give on the spot praise, something we are short on in our culture. We spend vast fortunes on reward and recognition programs when the most effective and well received strategy is to say “well done” right there and then. Cost to the organization: $0, payback: priceless!

Engage employees by being present in your communications

Great excitement yesterday in our home. My 16 year old, a keen student of the social sciences, went off to the Provincial Legislature to observe democracy in action. She said it was hilarious. “Why?” I asked. “Were the members of the house at one another’s throats.”

Apparently not; one was having a nap, most were busy on their Blackberries – though many were just playing games. My daughter was somewhat indignant – not because of her concern for tax dollar misuse - but rather because the person who was speaking did not have the attention of the house. And she is quite right to be outraged. When we do not pay attention to humans we dismiss them – which may well have been the intent at yesterday’s session.

  I remember once sitting with a senior leadership team and one of the leaders was working away on his Blackberry while the CEO was speaking. Apparently he does this with his own staff. The engagement scores within his group are abysmal.

Technology is wonderful it allows us to connect in many more and exciting ways. But we should remember to present in all our connections. If we try and be everywhere at once, we end up being nowhere and sending the message that we do not care. 

Employee passion - is it being directed toward work?

  On Sunday I had the pleasure of attending a multi-cultural choral performance featuring choirs from the Italian, Chinese and Jewish communities here in Vancouver. The finale involved all 160 voices singing songs from the three traditions.

It was a remarkable performance – and of a quality that one would expect from internationally acclaimed groups. And yet it was put together and performed by volunteers, ordinary folk; possibly the man or woman in the cubicle next door to yours. These people gave up their free time to give something astonishing back to their communities. Sometimes the effort was considerable - I know because my husband was one of the organizers.

I can’t help but wonder if the organizations these people work for understand the fabulous talent they employ – and I’m not talking about the ability to sing. What if these people gave just some of the passion they put into their singing, to their work?

It’s a question I can’t fully answer. But given what I saw over the weekend it would seem that a little bit of effort on the part of organizations to involve and enthuse employees would probably be more then worth its weight in gold. Performance improvement is in our people!

Role of management to engage all by reflecting diverse employee stories

Last week I was out hunting for behavioral stories for a client. I began my search with a contact list of middle to senior managers. I also had some basic information about each of the areas including some engagement scores.

 Here’s where it gets interesting. In the areas with high engagement scores – I had no trouble at all in getting stories of front-line employees living the desired behaviors. In the areas with lower engagement scores the stories, while all very worthy, were about middle managers and senior professionals.

Stories about building a new division or bringing a consortium of partners are valuable and should be told; but so too are the stories about re-arranging the stock room for improved efficiency and finding a way to get a package to a client quickly.

Managers need to understand that it is their job to ensure every employee feels valued and understands how he or she contributes to the organizational goals. Managers need to tell all their employees stories.

Storytelling - an engaging corporate strategy for large and small

My friend Sherri, who works for a Credit Union in Eastern Canada, uses story. Every week Sherri sends out a much loved email/story that reinforces core behaviors the organization is seeking to develop. Sherri is a one person communication shop and her time is her budget.

Coca Cola, EDS and the Wynn Hotel group all use storytelling. These organizations have implemented corporate-wide initiatives that reach tens of thousands of people. They use story to engage and align employees to the corporate journey so that they understand, not only what the corporate goals and objectives are, but also their role in meeting those objectives. Like Sherri’s much smaller initiative these programs illustrate the kinds of behaviors that employees must adopt to live the organizational values. The programs these organizations have adopted are integrated into their very fabric. Wynn for example uses story in hiring, training, to reward and for marketing.

Sherri and the high paid execs at Wynn understand that story works. Where facts and figures might alienate or bore us, stories are real and memorable. In a world of information overload they are a quick means of illustrating the complex and immediately helping employees understand how they contribute and indeed what is expected of them.

Take this story from Wynn for example. It’s about an employee who helped an elderly guest recover important medication left in a cab. The employee painstakingly reviewed video footage of the guest’s arrival and identified the cab license plate in the rear view mirror of the car in front. For fellow employees stories like these are not only good for morale, but they also illustrate goals and objectives in action and how they translate into behaviors.

I’d like to hear about your employee stories in action and post them on this site.

Hiring with culture in mind: engaging potential employees with the true story

This morning my husband and I were coaching our teenage daughter on how to respond to behavioral interview questions. She is now on to her second interview for a position with a well known coffee retailer. At one point she asked my husband about his first job interview. He recounted the following exchange:

“Interviewer: Are you any good at tutoring math?

My much younger husband: Yes

Interviewer: Good, when can you start?”

How times have changed. We have friends who have had to go through grueling six-month, ten interview procedures – only to come in second. Hiring has gone from instinctual (I like you) to left brain gone-wild process. It’s no surprise we’ve headed in that direction – employees who are happy and engaged in the organization are significantly more productive. On the flip side the cost of hiring and training a new employee can range from 25% to 200% of annual compensation (American Management Association).

I do agree that the implications of poor hiring decisions are ugly, but I am wondering if part of the problem is that we are so focused on getting the “best candidate” that we forget about the other half of the equation – our organizations and ensuring we are sending out the right messages. Here’s a story to illustrate what I mean.

Some years ago I was involved in an organization looking for a senior HR consultant. They spent a year searching for the right person. When they finally hired she lasted three days. What she thought she was getting and the reality were entirely different. Sensibly she cut her losses and moved on when she discovered her values, and those of the hiring organization, were at odds.

Organizations need to be very clear, not only on what they believe they need, but also on what they have to offer. They need to look beyond the best candidate to the best fit. It’s rather like searching for the perfect mate – you have to be sure about who you are and where you are headed - before you can find your ideal partner. 

It’s the job of communicators to ensure that our corporate story is clear – and that it is an accurate picture – one that is lived every day within the organization. A snow job will get you bemused employees disappointed that they are not living in a winter wonderland.