Ensuring a Winnable Game: Four Steps to Organization-Wide Strategic Success

We live in a fast-paced, ever-changing world that is filled with many distractions. Our organizations—and the members of our teams—are faced with many competing priorities. How do we help our teams and organizations stay focused to achieve our very important strategic goals in the midst of the “urgent” day-to-day responsibilities? 

Many organizations place their primary focus on creating a strategic plan. The high-level strategic plan helps set the direction for the organization. A company’s strategic objective may include goals for revenue growth, improved customer service, designing a new product, or moving into new geographical markets.

Common Challenges

But much of the important work comes after the plan is created. Bringing the plan to fruition to achieve the strategic goals requires focus, commitment, engagement, accountability, and regular review of progress. And in many cases, it requires people to change their behavior. As many leaders know, getting others to change their behavior can be very challenging—even changing our own behavior can be tough!

The challenges faced by Atrion, an IT services organization, while creating and implementing its strategic plans are common to many organizations.

Too Many Great Ideas. Have you and your organization ever been faced with so many great ideas that it becomes confusing and overwhelming to decide where to start and how to prioritize? Have you ended the year with completing few, if any, of your objectives? Not Enough Communication. Are you communicating the organization’s strategic goals to all your team members, or just to the Senior Leaders? Are all leaders communicating the same message to each of their teams? Does everyone understand the reason and importance of the goals you’ve set, and the company vision? Does each person know how they can contribute in their role? Inconsistent Participation. Is there a compelling reason why team members should participate? Is participation consistent across the organization? Have the leaders helped the team members understand “what’s in it for me?” Is everyone accountable for their participation? Lack of Clarity on Metrics. Are your metrics clearly tracking progress? Are your dashboards or reports easy to read and understand at a quick glance? How do you adjust your behaviors and efforts if you’re not achieving the progress you need to meet your goals?

When I took on the role of director of corporate strategy execution, we were faced with these challenges. But we recognized the importance of adopting a formal, proven methodology.

The Solution: Four Disciplines of Execution

To address these challenges, we selected “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” (or ‘4DX’) based on the research and book of the same name by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling. The four disciplines of execution that the authors outline—and we have used to successfully execute on our strategic plan are: 

Focus on the Wildly Important Goals (WIGs). Consider the “law of diminishing returns,” which says that if you try to focus on too many things at the same time, it generally dilutes the focus and effectiveness. Instead, choose two to three strategic goals. Make sure that these are the highest priority to help your organization or team achieve your vision. Act on the Lead Measures. How do you know which activities will help you and your team achieve success? If you wait until the game is over, it will be too late to adjust your strategy and plays if needed. The lead measures need to be activities that you and your team members can influence and be measured regularly. These measures will provide the visibility as to whether your actions are leading to the goal. And if they are not, it will allow you time to change direction. Another important key to success is to engage members at all levels of the organization. If team members feel their role and participation is valued, and are supporting one another, they’re helping to set the team up for success. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard. Have you noticed that your team’s efforts and participation are usually much higher when they’re keeping score, and they can easily track their progress? The healthy competition is a great motivator for each team to do their best. And this visibility also allows you to recognize the accomplishments of the teams, or help coach them to get back on track to achieving their goals. Create a Cadence of Accountability. What happens when goals are set but there isn’t a consistent, formal process for follow-through and accountability? It becomes very easy for strategic initiatives to be side-lined or lost in the midst of all the other competing priorities. It’s critical for the team to set a regular cadence for their meetings, to make weekly commitments for the actions they’ll take to help “move the ball down the field,” and for the team members to have shared accountability to help achieve their success. 

We have used these four disciplines to help us achieve organization-wide strategic success of exceeding our company’s revenue goals, profitability and client satisfaction. We have definitely found that this approach helps to bring the focus, discipline, participation, and accountability to create a winnable game.

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Engage Teams for Organizational Success

Peter Drucker said, “No executive has ever suffered because his people were strong and effective.” Having a strong and effective team will create engagement and excitement, empowering the team with a “CAN DO” attitude that leads to great momentum for success. 

In fact, we all know that there is a limit to what you can achieve on your own. Therefore, to enjoy greater influence, impact, and income, you need buy-in from the whole team. But many leaders are unsure where to start. 

Hire for Success 

Team engagement actually starts at the hiring stage. First, you must attract the best team for your organization. Spend time in an interview procedure to discuss the vision and culture of the organization. Look out for key areas, such as: character, commitment, courage, chemistry, competency, and compassion. 

If you have inherited a team, I would encourage you still to focus on these 6 Cs. This is because this will build the framework for gaining the culture you need. 

In addition, every employee wants to feel secure in their career, as well as know there is growth opportunity. Leaders who want outstanding engagement from their teams need to display and clearly communicate potential growth opportunities. They also need to identify and work with those employees that they want to grow with these opportunities. 

Build the Best Team 

Clearly, leaders play an important role in leading teams. Equally important, though, a leader must realize that they have a pivotal role in first “building” the team. In fact, there is a big difference in having a team that works “for” you versus having a team that works “with” you. 

The first option is more formal. The team rarely exhibits much vision, and it feels that they are just there to do a job and that is it.  However, when you have the latter, you have created a team that is engaged for success. A team that works with you typically displays:

loyaltypassion ·vision commitment to you and the team desire to be and to deliver the best accountability trust. 

These attributes can be found in many team members, but it takes a leader to uncover them—for them to flourish. 

Avoid Criticism; Offer Engagement 

As I coach and train other professionals, I often see a “Tug of War” between the employer and the employee. This leads to frustration, wasted energy, and a breakdown of trust and productivity. Often, this can be traced back to poor leadership. 

When I train leaders, I often say, “Don’t criticize what you allow to happen.” It can be too easy for a leader to criticize a team member, often behind their back, without actually ever addressing the situation or person. The leader, therefore, allows the wrong things to happen, which ultimately affects productivity. 

One of the best ways to create engagement for success is for the leader to be engaged with the team. When this happens the team is engaged with the leader. Success and engagement is then part of the culture of the team. 

Train for Transformation 

Great leaders are great because of great teams. To see teams engage requires leadership training. When a leader sees—maybe for the first time—what she can achieve with an engaged team, it can literally transform a company. And many leadership skills can be learned, including: 

casting a vision—that has team buy-inidentify and recognizing emerging leadersremoving unrealistic expectations—so the team can exceed its limitationscreating a culture of engagement for success by all. 

To be sure, leading a team is a great responsibility. But the coming year holds many opportunities for leaders to become better at leading themselves and their teams. More importantly, leading a team that is fully engaged in where you want to go is fundamental for increased productivity—and can deliver huge dividends for the organization.

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