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