When we work with Strategy and Operations Leaders, one of the most common challenges we hear is the lack of visibility team members have to the overall strategy and direction of the organization.
From working with hundreds of organizations, there is a desire at the employee level for more clarity from Leadership and clear communication of what the priorities are for the company. More than that, many employees also want to know the ‘why’ behind the priorities.
It’s almost like employees want to connect with their work on a deeper level than just coming in and punching a timecard.
At Elate, we believe that as humans, employees want to feel connected to their work, and know how they fit into the larger picture of what they are contributing towards day-in and day-out. Further, they want to have a sense of direction and understanding.
For many employees, this sense of direction helps create autonomy through clarity. Or, more exactly, it's the direction provided from Leadership that empowers them to make decisions on a daily basis without a fear of working on the wrong thing or getting whiplash from constant priority shifting. This helps create a culture where they can have confidence in making decisions, as well as a compass for how they carry out their work day-in and day-out.
However, this isn’t a problem confined to employees. While it may be felt across team members and managers of the organization, it’s also a challenge prominently felt at the Leadership level.
Strategy and Operations Leaders we work with also express a consistent desire to have more alignment around the strategy. As one Leader shared, “I want to walk down the hall, ask any employee ‘What are the biggest priorities we have for the year’, and get a consistent answer.”
Subscribe to The Pulse: Insights for Strategy Leaders
The Importance of a Strategic Framework
So if employees want more freedom to prioritize their work with confidence, and Strategy and Operations Leaders wish that more employees knew what the priorities are for the organization, then why is this so much easier said than done?
Well, let’s start with some low-hanging fruit…
- First, it could be that the strategy doesn’t exist in the first place. Maybe your organization operates like a fire station, sounding the alarm any time there is a fire, sending everyone down the fire station pole (not sure if there’s an official name for that, I’m sure there is), and racing off to put out that fire.
- Or, maybe you do set what you would deem as a strategy, however, rather than a true long-term strategic plan that brings together direction and execution, your organization fell victim to the short-term fix you were hoping [insert acronym framework abc] was going to provide. Instead of a strategic planning framework that brought folks together, you instead just set roughly one million objectives each quarter, that are really more like a checklist of items that type A folks can feel good about crossing off daily.
Related Reading: 6 Unhealthy Types of Strategic Objectives (and How to Fix Them)
While there are countless other examples of why that disconnect might exist, the reality is that it’s real for so many organizations we work with. Maybe it isn’t for you and your team. If that’s the case, you have two choices: you can either stop reading or you can use this as a good pressure test to see if there are any ways your team can improve your strategic planning framework.
For many organizations this is a big problem. Answering the questions of “How do we help employees know what to work on, how to work on it, and why they are doing so in the first place?” isn’t going to be solved by a snappy slack note to the company or a lengthy email from the CEO. To solve this problem, we need to set our eyes on the end game and refer back to it any chance we get. Shifting the culture of our organization to bring strategy into the minds of all employees takes intentionality and commitment.
At Elate, we believe a Strategic Planning and Execution Framework can help bring together long-term vision and tactical execution, while also empowering employees. Done well, we also believe that it can provide a level of visibility and transparency to ensure employees also understand the ‘why’ behind their work, as well as preventing whiplash from decisions made at the Leadership level.
Introducing Themes: The Connective Tissue of Strategy
So at this point, you might be thinking to yourself, “I must see this framework! It will solve all of my problems!”
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it probably won’t. At least not overnight, or even in a couple of quarters.
As you can see below, the framework is not rocket science.
Similar to many frameworks you’ve likely seen before, we start by highlighting the impact of setting or validating the organization’s Mission, Vision, and Values. Not only do these set the direction and tone for the rest of our plan, but the Vision should be thought of in long-term horizons of three, five, and/or ten years.
From there, we recommend starting with what we call Operating Metrics. These are the mission-critical KPIs that are non-negotiables for your business to monitor and achieve. It’s likely that these metrics will be directly aligned with what your CEO communicates to the Board of Directors, Shareholders, or whoever they report to on behalf of the company.
Depending on company size and industry, we recommend that these operating metrics are communicated and even made visible to employees, because ultimately the outcomes they are seeking within their own objectives should contribute towards those operating metrics. However, I know there are some circumstances where that isn’t possible. So even if you can’t share the exact attainment-to-goal, it is worth communicating what these metrics mean and how they relate to the company’s direction.
So we’ve set our Mission, Vision and Values, while defining what goals we care about hitting as a business. What’s next? For most organizations, this means one thing, “Time to start handing out objectives to folks!”
Not so fast my friends.
While as Strategy and Operations Leaders we eat, breathe, and sleep this stuff, believe it or not, Operating Metrics aren’t necessarily something that employees live for day-in and day-out. In fact, if you were to distill most employees' purpose down to a number, it might not be all that inspiring.
Rather than a metric, for many employees that sense of purpose comes from a greater understanding of how their work aligns with the organization’s mission and vision.
That’s where the magic of what we refer to as Themes comes into play.
Related: Guide to Building a Successful Operating Rhythm
Bringing Themes to Life
As we shared earlier, your Mission, Vision, and Values should be evident through everything within your strategic plan. Further, the operating metrics that truly define success for the organization are often what your company and CEO are evaluated on from shareholders, board members, or other key stakeholders. But it’s the Themes that serve as the connective tissue or bridge between the long-term vision and the tactical execution that generate results.
For some organizations they might refer to Themes as Pillars, Strategic Priorities, or something else, but the intent is that Themes serve as the annual rallying cries for the most important initiatives for the organization that year. Themes might not explicitly spell out a quantifiable outcome, but they certainly should connect to the operating metrics set by the organization.
Let's say your operating metric is to get to $100M in revenue. While that tells us the ‘what’, Themes help bridge the connection between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. As we think about the rallying cry to get there, our Theme might be "Drive indispensability in our market" or "Expand beyond XYZ" or "Grow within our Customer Base" - these are specific ways that clearly help employees understand that this intentional way of growing is an area of focus they can prioritize their work around.
Further, Themes need to be created in a way that resonates with all areas of the organization. While we might want to generate more leads or upsell customers, we want to ensure we aren’t just catering to sales teams.
At Elate, we are a software company in growth mode. Yet, in drinking our own champagne, we have a Theme that helps us orient ourselves around priorities that aren’t just a tangible sales number. This year, one of our company Themes is ‘Create Meaningful Moments’.
You might be thinking, ‘What in the world does that even mean?’ Well, it might mean something different depending on where you sit within our organization, but at its core creating meaningful moments is how we want our entire organization to approach their role, how they prioritize their work, and the why behind what we do.
As an example, we just held our first Strategy and Operations Summit here in Indianapolis. Overall, this event was tied into our desire to create meaningful moments for prospects, customers, and Strategy and Operations Leaders, yet, it also informed how I hope every employee we have approached the event.
From Engineers to Sales Reps, all of our team helped pitch-in to make the event an incredible one. For team members working the swag booth to those that hosted customers in Indy, we wanted to create meaningful moments that spanned far outside of just being a software vendor.
But this Theme even informs how we set priorities on quarterly Objectives, as well as the way our team approaches their work day-in and day-out.
As I shared earlier, Themes may or may not always have a quantifiable target associated with them. Regardless, they should serve as a rallying cry for employees, and a lens in which they can look through the strategy to see what to prioritize, why it’s important, and how they can more meaningfully approach their work.
We reference how Strategy and Operations Leaders help harness the electricity from the CEO and Leadership team and translate it in a way that doesn’t electrocute team members, but instead, serve as the conduit between that big vision and how it comes to life.
Well, Themes are often the language or connective tissue that empowers Strategy and Operations Leaders to connect an operating plan with a strategy. It aligns Executive Stakeholders around clear outcomes that are aligned with board expectations, while also using language that makes sense to employees and gets them bought into the direction.
If you're enjoying this so far, we did an entire live session Q&A on Strategic Planning Frameworks and Best Practices. You can check out the recording here.
Best Practices for Implementing Themes
So what are some best practices we would recommend when introducing Themes into your organization's strategic planning framework? There are three things to keep in mind:
Don’t Overdo It: Keep Themes Focused
While it’s fun to get your Leadership Team ideating and riffing on potential Themes, the tendency can be to keep all the ideas. Unfortunately, we aren’t giving out participatory ribbons. In the process of setting and agreeing upon what we will focus on through Themes, we are also being intentional about eliminating what we won’t be prioritizing when we set our Themes. Themes should outline our priorities as an organization, and communicate to employees what they shouldn’t be prioritizing. Ideally we keep it at three to five Themes, and we see this helps clarity. If you set many more than five, you run the risk of saying everything is a priority, thus nothing truly is.
Strike a Balance: Clear but Not Overly Prescriptive
While this is easier said than done, Themes should strike a balance between clear, yet not overly prescriptive. While Themes are priorities across the business that resonate with multiple areas, we don’t want them to be something as simple as ‘Work Across Teams!’ Yes, that’s clearly something we should do, not a Theme in how we prioritize work. Similarly, we don’t want to get too lengthy and specific in Themes. If we do that, then we lose the art of allowing for multiple different stakeholders with unique perspectives to feel as though they are contributing.
Make Themes Living Concepts: Reinforce Throughout the Year
Themes shouldn’t just be said once at an annual company kickoff. But rather, they should be phrases your team comes back to throughout the year to remind ourselves of what’s important and help bring clarity to employees when they find themselves faced with decisions around urgent vs important. Remember, these are rallying cries, and Objectives set quarter-to-quarter should point back to Themes.
Embedding Strategy in Culture Through Themes
While Themes are just one part of the equation, we do believe that they serve as one of the most important components in building a culture focused on execution of the strategy. The framework we deploy at Elate helps connect empower Strategy and Operations Leaders with a clear, consistent operating rhythm to set a foundation to build upon and scale their strategic planning process and execution governance.
If you’re interested in learning more about Themes or our approach to Strategic Planning, don’t hesitate to reach out or schedule time with our team. Our team would love to share more about how we are empowering thousands of Leaders to ensure strategy is a part of their organization’s culture.
Related Reading:
