3 things to get your Frontline staff to execute your company Strategy

Even the most brilliant strategy is worth nothing if it isn't executed well, especially by your front line — the employees who interact daily with your customers. Unfortunately, these employees are regularly asked to execute strategies that others developed and that they may not understand, never mind feel committed or connected to. In fact, according to Robert Kaplan and David Norton, the founders of the Balanced Scorecard, only 5% of employees understand their company's strategy. This makes successful execution nearly impossible. So how can you help frontline employees not only understand but get behind your company's strategy?

The Harvard Business Review recently published an article on Making your Startegy Work on the Frontline where theyou can read the full article and the case studies.

We often see a clear separation between the processes of strategy creation and execution. Strategy is created by a small set of executives and then passed down through the organization to be translated and implemented, this separation is often responsible for poor execution.

The most succesful way to Engage all of your company is to take strategy creation out of the board room and bring people from all parts of the organization together, regardless of level, to think about the company's future.

For managers in orgnisations that continue to create strategies at the top of the organization and cascade them down here are three approaches to rally your frontline employees to take ownership and feel accountable for the company's future.

1. Communicate and Clarify

If employees are involved in creating the strategy, they are already bought into it, making execution both easier and smoother. When that's not possible, however, the strategy needs to be communicated across the organisation.

Managers need to relay it to their employees so that it feels real, achievable, applicable to their part of the company, and valuable to the customer. Being able to communicate this strategy on a single page execution plan that is visible to all of your people every day

Strategy communications should always be accompanied by metrics, which help frontline employees take ownership over their roles in the execution. The message should be two-fold: this is what we are trying to achieve and this is how we will measure if we are achieving it. Of course, some jobs will be more naturally connected to the strategy than others. For example, it is easier for a sales representative to understand how the strategy affects her job than an account receivables clerk. Yet, all employees should be bought into it. The role of managers to explain how the strategy creates value for the companies customers and help them integrate it into the work they do - regardless of how direct their relationship is to the customer.

2. Don't Dictate How

Leaders often over-define the specifics of how strategy should be executed. Leaders and managers can set the vision and targets but they shouldn't dictate how employees achieve them. More specificity may make frontline employees' jobs easier, but it eliminates their need to think and diminishes their sense of ownership.

By asking frontline employees how they can achieve thier objectives will often uncover new appraoches to execution that senior management hadn't thought of. New ideas pop up from the pressure of trying to solve a problem for the customer. Therefore often the best strategies comefrom the frontline staff.

3. Use Core Values to Guide Execution Decisions

Since you aren't telling your frontline employees exactly what to do, you need to rely on your company's values to help drive their decisions and actions. Thousands of execution decisions are made every day in an organization: a sales rep decides whether to give a large customer a deal on their next order; your researcher decides whether to explore a new feature for your product. It's impossible for any executive to create a strategy that dictates all of these decisions.

That is were core values come in. They help guide actions but also help employees make tough choices, especially when the choice pits employee, customer, and stakeholder interests against each other.

Core Values are best communicated through stories. If managers cannot tell stories about how the core values relate to their work, then the values aren't core. Find examples of employees using values to make decisions aligned with the strategy and then take opportunities — in staff meetings, over coffee, during weekly one-on-ones — to tell those stories.

It is likely that some of your frontline employees will voice objections to the strategy. If they do express concerns - listen to them carefully - as they are where the rubber hits the road. It is the managers role to allow these concerns to be communicated to the top of the organisation. Once the concerns have been heard and dealt with then people need to get on board with the strategy regardless of their opinion.

Principles to Remember

You should:

•Involve your frontline employees in strategy creation when possible.
•Share stories about employees who used values to guide strategic decisions.
•Ask for input about how the company can achieve its goals.

You shouldn't:

•Be overly specific about how to execute the strategy.
•Communicate the strategy without explaining how success is measured.
•Stifle objections to the strategy.

Here is a link if you want to understand more on how to be more effective in the execution of your company strategy from the Business Execution Experts

How the Recession has changed your Consumers Views

One thing we know is that the Global recession has changed much about how we need to interact with our customers. What you may not know is how much.

Euro RSCG Worldwide has just published its new research in a white paper called "The New Consumer". The research shows how the recession has given consumers an added reason to think about the way they buy things. (Read the full white paper here).

The study -- which included responses from 5,700 adults in Brazil, China, France, Japan, Netherlands, England and the U.S. -- found that across the board, people are looking for ways to add meaning to their lives, and are fed up with many aspects of consumerism.

Here is a brief summary of some of the main points (full summary is available here)

Consumers are smarter, more empowered, and more demanding than previous generations of shoppers. They make full use of online tools to connect with others and score the right buys.

• 62% do lots of consumer research online—e.g., seeking out product info, reviews and ratings, price comparisons.
• 79% read consumer product feedback/reviews online before making a purchase.
• 57% trust customer reviews more than “expert” reviews.
  

People have resolved to change the status quo and take greater control of their present lives and futures. A primary way in which they will do this is through their consumption choices—their strongest means of power and influence. We are seeing the advent of “proactive mindfulness”:

• 72% are shopping more carefully and mindfully than they used to.
• 54% are paying more attention to the environmental and/or social impact of the products they buy.
• 51% are more interested today in how and where products are made.
• 45% are willing to pay a slightly higher price for products that are socially or environmentally responsible.
  

They are eager to reduce their negative impact on the environment and on other people:

• 64% say making environmentally friendly choices makes them feel good.
• 72% feel good about reducing the amount of waste they create.
• 54% are making an effort to buy fewer disposable goods.
• 65% believe they have a responsibility to censure unethical companies by avoiding their products.
• 51% avoid shopping at stores that don’t treat their employees fairly.
• 57% say it makes them feel good to support local producers, artisans, and manufacturers, and 45% say it is important to buy locally produced goods.
  

Consumers seek to align with brand partners who share their personal values:

• 50% say it is more important to them today to feel good about the companies with which they do business.
• 57% prefer to buy from companies that share their personal values.
• 49% prefer to do business with companies that have a reputation for a purpose beyond profits (e.g., Newman’s Own, The Body Shop).
• 54% believe the most successful and profitable businesses in the future will be those that practice sustainability

Naomi Troni the CMO of Euro RSCG Worldwide says "It's bigger than just environmental concerns -- it's really about a more meaningful way of life, and it's more widespread. Even five years ago, things like organics were seen as more of a fringe movement. Now, more people are looking beyond the impact of things on their own bodies and health, and on the global impact of their purchases."

Another clear change, she says, is that consumers are enjoying many of these cutbacks, not suffering through them. In the U.S., for example, 87% say saving money makes them feel good about themselves.

"It makes them feel smarter," she says, "and they enjoy feeling one up on the brand."

Question is now how do you improve your brand in the mind of the new consumer. For many businesses it requires a transformational change and this can only occur if you are prepared to change the way you you see, think and act - both as individuals and as a company.

Click here if you are interested in exploring how to transform your business potential into extraordinary results

6 reasons to be cautious when hiring an MBA

I just read an interesting article from Productivity501 called never hire a MBA. While the title might seem severe it does highlight several downsides of hiring a MBA graduate - Here is my summary (for the full article read here)

There are a lot of people who overvalue an MBA. A master’s of business administration might look attractive when hiring a new employee but here are some points to be careful of when hiring them.

If someone has a master’s degree in running a business, why are they coming to you for a job? Years ago, it made sense. It was very expensive to start your own business. That isn’t the case any more. So if someone with an MBA is coming to you there are several possibilities:

1. They can’t run a business. - If they can’t make it on their own, do you want them working for you? Is it possible you can find someone better without an MBA? If you need a particular part of their skill set, maybe it is a good fit. Just be aware that if you need someone with a really good skill at running a business, you need to understand why you should trust their skills more than they do.
2. Want real world experience. - This is a valid reason, but just make sure you aren’t paying someone for their MBA experience if they are coming to you because they don’t really have anything beyond their diploma. Someone with an MBA who says they want real world experience could be an excellent find and become a very passionate employee. However, as we’ll discuss later, one of the drawbacks of many MBAs is that they often over-estimate their skill set.
3. No ideas of their own. – Not necessarily a bad thing if you just want someone to execute your business plan, but make sure you aren’t paying a premium for them to have good ideas. If they can’t come up with a good business idea on their own, they may not be able to come up with good ideas for you.
4. Too specialized. - Someone who specialized in one specific area may not have a wide enough skill set to run their own business. If their expertise fits well with your business then it can be a great fit for both of you. However, usually the idea of an MBA is that it is a general education in all aspects of business.
5. Lack of Experience - Someone with a fresh MBA looking for a job, may not come with much real experience. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you understand that having an MBA doesn’t automatically make someone good at their job. A large number of people are going back to school to get an MBA after having worked for a number of years. On one hand, you may find someone who has a great deal of real world experience that they can apply to your business problems. On the other, you may be dealing with someone who is making a significant career change. When you look at someone’s experience make sure you aren’t throwing them into a situation that goes well beyond what they are capable of doing. It is easy to tweak a resumé to showcase skills in the past to align with the jobs they want in the future. If their resumé says they have “management experience” don’t automatically assume they possess the skills to handle having 40 people reporting to them. Make sure you understand exactly what they managed, the extent of their authority and the results they achieved. If their only experience with leadership is being under the leadership of others, they are likely to emulate all of the bad habits without picking up on any of the good ones. If you need a manager, don’t give someone this position based solely on their MBA. Make sure they have real experience with good results in management either before or after getting their master’s degree.
6. Overconfidence- This is more of an issue with people who have had very little real work experience. While most MBA programs offer good content, simply being exposed to a lot of great ideas doesn’t say much about your ability to implement those ideas in real life. Just because someone took a class in negotiations doesn’t mean they are any good at it. Worse, they may think they are good at it and blindly cause a number of problems. Confidence is good, but not when it blinds you to your inability. For an MBA, the pretty piece of paper they have hanging on their wall can make them less careful. It can encourage them to jump into things that they have no preparation for. It doesn’t take too much life experience to correct this, but you may or may not want to be their employer during this learning experience. Further, the value of the MBA is quite a bit lower if their real skill set is developed on the job at your expense.

Conclusion

If you are looking to hire someone, don’t overlook them simply because they have an MBA, but at the same time don’t over-value their degree and let it blind you to their actual real-life skills.

But, if you have no skills in running a business today, getting an MBA isn’t going to change that.


Read more: http://www.productivity501.com/never-hire-an-mba/7918/#ixzz0rG6JgqIQ

Four reasons why good Strategies fail

Every week I recieve the Growth Tips from RESULTS.com and the recent one really resonates with most large businesses.

If you do not recieve the Growth tips already take a few minutes to log on and have a look.

In their latest post COO Stephen Lynch identifies the top three reasons why good strategies fail?

1 - Execution
2 - Execution
3 - Execution

In the words of the immortal Tom Peters he forgot the fourth one - Execution

In the book “Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change”, MBA trained managers know about planning, but they know very little about how to execute a plan.

A survey of senior executives at 197 companies showed that firms achieve only 63% of the expected results of their strategic plans. The key reason is they don’t know how to execute effectively.

Here is the insights from the Business Execution Experts on the causes of execution failure:

1 - Lack of strategic focus.
2 - Resistance to change.
3 - Poor communication.
4 - Incentives not aligned with strategy.
5 - Not paying attention.
6 - No cadence.

Read the full article here

Talking to a company over the past week their summary of the Strategic Plan was 34 pages long. The full version was well over 100 pages!

Most of the people who worked where the rubber hot the road did not understand or know how the work they were doing fitted into the big picture. As a consequence they continued to work on the biggest enemy of execution - Business as usual.

Simplifying your strategies are essentials if you want to win.

Michael Porter the Harvard University Professor of Management and Economics says “Many managers simply do not understand the importance of having a clear strategy. Strategy is about making trade-offs. The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do”

Jeff Imment who succeeded Jack Welch at the head of GE says “What is strategy but resource allocation? When you strip away all the noise, that’s what it comes down to. Strategy means making clear cut choices about how to compete. You cannot be everything to everybody, no matter what the size of your business or how deep its pockets. You have to figure out what to say NO to”

Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE says “Strategy is not a lengthy action plan, you should be able to fit it on a single page"

Here is a link to a document from the Business Exection Experts for simplifying your company strategy onto a single page so all of your people can see the strategic priorities - everyday.

If you would like assistance on understanding how to use it they often have free workshops accross New Zealand, North America and the United States Click here to find one near you