As a leader, creating the company vision is easy; putting together a plan that gets everyone in the organization passionately marching in the same direction to achieve that vision is much harder! The missing link for so many leaders is to connect their vision to their strategies to their tactics. Many organizations seem to “get off track” because the day-to-day tactics of well-meaning individual contributors are often counterproductive to achieving the strategies that contribute to the overall company vision. And it’s not the individual contributor’s fault; it’s our fault as leaders! One of the most important things we can do as a leader in fact, it may be the single most important thing we do is to ensure that everyone in the company not only understands the vision, but also understands how their day-to-day contribution impacts the strategies that support the vision.
Ultimately it’s all in the “how”. When faced with a customer service issue, do our service reps understand why a happy customer is so important to the company’s strategies? Do they understand that “how” they satisfy this customer actually makes a difference? You see, if their goal is simply to get the customer to check “Very Satisfied” on all the survey questions, they’re going to approach that customer service issue differently than if their goal is to ensure the customer is so satisfied they will buy from us again. As a leader, I need to be confident that my customer service people know that customer satisfaction is a key contributor to achieving our recurring revenue goals which will help us become the “#1 Provider of Widgets in the Tri-City Area”.
Tactics connected to Strategies connected to Vision. Creating that type of connectedness throughout your organization requires that you lead with purpose by clearly connecting the company’s tactics and strategies to the company vision. What are some of the ways you create connectedness in your organization?