If you ask employees about the strategy and vision of their own company, one often hears the following sentences:
- “We need a clear strategy”,
- “What is my company’s strategy? No idea”,
- “With us, the strategy is hardly tangible”,
- “Ah that’s so wischi, wash with us”
- “That is very little concrete”
- “I can not do anything with that”
- “Is too high-level for me”
Strategies and visions are difficult to formulate
It is difficult to formulate strategies and visions – especially from my time in management consulting, IT service providers were always striving to find a strategy – but basically the strategy was always as follows: “We do it – what the customer pays for”.
This goal was packed into visions that were not tangible for anyone. Sentences such as: The human being as an enabler of IT or the agile service provider in the digital transformation have hardly stimulated dreams. Here I always asked myself why not take the following honest and realistic vision: “ We make customers successful with our advice in all areas “ . Yes, we are not very specific, but management consulting is a flexible and not very specific profession anyway – but that’s exactly why I was there – it was a great experience to get to know a lot.
Other companies also have strategies such as the best IT service provider in Bavaria or leading technologies that make the difference hardly contributed to the motivation of their employees. All of these strategies and visions sounded great, but they didn’t help the employees to orientate themselves.
Agility needs a clear vision and strategy
Agility in particular needs a clear strategy and a vision that employees can get carried away with. It creates a mental cinema and makes people think for themselves. I particularly like the vision of my fellow student Daniel Krauss (MeinFernbus – Flixbus): Green and smart mobility to discover the world “This vision in particular stimulates thinking and dreaming and I am already looking forward to discovering the world again with the Flixbus after COVID-19.
Tips for finding the right vision and strategy
Finding the right strategy is not always easy and I know that many experienced top managers here also do not simply shake such a strategy off their sleeves. From the book Strategy for Strategies I have taken four key questions for formulating a strategy:
- Where should the journey go?
- Who do we need to involve in order to achieve the goals?
- Which measures are necessary?
- Who implements these measures?
- How do we show travel progress?
I think that these key questions help to find a strategy – it is particularly important: who are we doing it for? It is also important for the employees to formulate: What measures are planned and how is the progress? Employees in particular often tend to: tell me specifically – the big picture is not important to me: I want to know what to do! – You will quickly become specific by taking action.
Reading tip: Strategy for Strategies by Rudolf Surrey
Conclusion
Finding a strategy is not easy and you can quickly formulate it not very specifically and therefore not helpful for employees. Such visions and strategies in particular should stimulate dreaming and motivate employees and get them carried away. It is therefore important to ask the right questions and to formulate them in concrete measures.
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