People Align Themselves
I recently read the book Fake Work by Brent Peterson and Gaylan Neilson and have been thinking about how much it aligns with basic, proven ideas that have been around for years. That is, when you do work that is not aligned with the overall strategy, it is fake work. In fact, the authors’ research indicates that 70% of employees don’t know what to do to support their company’s strategy—and, even more disturbing, that up to 50% of all work is fake work. Kind of mind-blowing when you think about it.
Connecting people to your strategy is the key to execution, and the elimination of fake work. Everyone I talk with today is busier than they’ve ever been before. Every day is go, go, go. Kind of makes you wonder –I mean, everyone is really, really busy…and 50% of all that activity could be fake work—stuff that’s not aligned with the overall strategy. Hmmm. So we could be more productive and execute better if we could align our people with our strategy!
But here’s the kicker, and it’s one of those nuggets that Brent and Gaylan shared in the book: “Managers don’t align people, people have to align themselves.” Connecting people to strategy is less about giving direction and more about engaging thought. Everyday, your people translate the overall strategy at their level–they set their individual priorities on what they think will move the company toward its goals. However, if the priorities they set are based on imperfect or incomplete translations of your strategy, then their work won’t be aligned. In fact, there’s an excellent chance that they will be engaged in fake work: costing your company time and money, without helping it advance toward its goals. Being very busy is not the same as executing the strategy.
Individual translation of strategy is the key to enabling people to connect themselves to the strategy. It provides them with the opportunity to understand the overall strategy and how they fit into the big picture. It also allows them to personally engage on a strategic level, thinking through their objectives and their work within the context of the overall strategy. Done well, this results in something we call Strategic LiteracySM…which is the collective knowledge of people in their own strategy. This must be done with the full understanding that “people align themselves.”