You laid out a clear plan to guide your team. Your annual offsite was well received. The level of energy when you left the event was at an all-time high. You captured the output from the team and marketing made it look great. The problem is, it's six months later and you're getting nowhere.
Before you start doubting the planning process or the plan itself, take a look in the mirror, and ask yourself a few simple questions:
1. Is the plan top of mind and meaningful for every employee?
When you reflect on the communication of the plan, was it:
Communicated by top management?
Written in simple language that everyone understands?
Shared with each employee from their perspective, so that it guides their daily work?
Effectively supported and reinforced by your leadership team?
If you talk about it often, your people will know it's important to you. Companies that are invested in building culture kick off all meetings with a reading from the corporate playbook. Only when your teams are living the plan and talking about it every day does that document on the wall take root in your culture.
2. Do your actions and decisions align with your vision?
You know how critical it is to "walk the talk". So why don't you do it? Leaders catch themselves saying the right things and reinforcing the corporate vision and purpose in the boardroom, but often the actions they take are inconsistent.
For example, you pride yourself in the fact that "Our Strength Is Our People", but you aren't keeping pace with evolving benefits, flexible work hours or other considerations that are so important in attracting and retaining today's top talent.
Maybe your plan relies on the introduction of new products, but your NPI process doesn't deliver them to market in a timely or cost effective way and you prioritize investment in other initiatives.
Take the time to understand which projects will drive the results that are critical to meeting your strategic goals. Prioritize those activities over all else and execute ruthlessly.
3. Do you reward the right behaviours?
A manufacturing company can't understand why their efforts to improve the accuracy of production planning and inventory control are not taking hold. Months have been spent communicating the importance of the effort, with no improvement. The management team is contemplating progressive discipline to really get the point across. The trouble is, they didn't address the informal recognition system that rewards throughput and not accuracy in the production process.
Your team may understand the plan and support it completely, but if you aren't actively recognizing and rewarding the behaviours that you are seeking, it will fail. Always review your recognition and performance management programs to ensure they align to the plan.
An engagement with Chapman Management Solutions starts with a period of observation and diagnosis, working with your teams to understand how they work. This approach reveals meaningful insights, allowing you to highlight the root causes of poor execution and apply simple fixes to immediately improve the adoption and execution of your strategic plan.