Strategy Translation
By Ron Cox, CEO, Tailwind
Many senior leaders across different businesses have shared with me that their executives and managers aren’t strategic enough. In their words, “they don’t get the strategy and aren’t aligned with what we’re trying to do.” This sometimes causes leaders to face an approach/avoidance conflict. On the one hand, they need to engage executives and managers at all levels in executing the strategy. On the other hand, if they don’t understand the strategy, they’ll put an operational spin on it and, in their words, “drive it in the ditch.” No wonder senior leaders are frustrated! Their strategic execution is being held hostage by a lack of strategic thinking skills across the organization!
Or is it? Strategy translation is a very different process from strategic thinking. It’s more like problem-solving, which is straightforward and can be taught at any level. When I was head of OD for Xerox, we taught problem-solving skills to 100,000 people around the world—basically everyone in the organization. This training rolled out globally in a number of different languages. Every person was involved…including presidents, security personnel, administrative assistants, custodians. And every level used these skills and approaches to improve the business from where they worked.
When you reframe the discussion and shift from strategic thinking skills to strategy translation process, it redefines the issue and makes it easier to close the gap. Using a structured approach, strategy translation can be done well by executives and managers at any level of an organization.