How to Enable Strategic Departmental Execution
In a previous post (“Thinking Strategically as a Way of Being”), I reflected on the importance of having leaders and key contributors in all parts of an organization thinking strategically as they make decisions and act. Nowhere is this way of being more critical than at departmental mid-management levels. There, most decision-making and activity is tactical in nature – even by role definition. But it needs to be more than that. It needs to be strategic.
Those decisions and actions often focus on operational concerns such as resource allocation or prioritization of work streams around a particular initiative. As a result, they can have unintentionally negative impacts on the broader set of corporate strategies not being considered in the moment. That’s why the imperative to be thinking strategically as a conscious, constant act is so challenging, yet so necessary. One key to fostering and supporting this way of being deep in the departmental trenches is a simple and obvious one – communication. Top-down and cross-functional.
Here’s how I think about it
Consider this common scenario: Mid-Level Manager (MLM) leads a departmental team charged with executing on a specific functional slice of a singular strategy for the organization. The strategy is well-defined, as is the scope of the team’s responsibilities around it. What is not well-understood, however, is the team’s need to be ready to pivot to a different, potentially soon-to-emerge priority strategy, one that is still percolating in ideation stage outside of this team’s full awareness. MLM and team are about to be blindsided.
Thinking strategically in MLM’s role requires applying what I referred to in that earlier post as “ambidexterity of thinking.” To reduce the potential for blindsiding, ambidextrous thinking would have MLM’s “cognitive left hand” allocating resources in full support of the existing, defined strategy. Meanwhile, MLM’s “cognitive right hand” would be thinking strategically about how to re-deploy some or all of those same resources nimbly should an emerging strategy suddenly become of equal or even primary strategic importance. Put simply, things can change.
Organizational Barriers to Visibility
But how ready are most organizations to pivot at the level of in-motion execution within departments? Probably not very. But couldn’t just a bit of reasoned foresight provide better preparedness to do so? Sounds easy, right? Well, often it is not. Vantage points on strategy are often, at best, varied and, at worst, limited, sometimes by design. The visibility picture often looks like this:
a) Down in the departmental trenches, it can be challenging to look around. There is not a lot to see when you look to either side of the trench you’re in. Is there another trench over there somewhere, and, if so, what is happening in it? Hard to tell. Moreover, no one seems to be inviting you to look up. In fact, there is risk in not keeping your head down. Don’t ask; just act.
b) Above the trenches, few attempts are made to give those in the trenches something to look up at – or look out for. In fact, that lack of visibility is often intentianal. There can be perceived risk in a show-and-tell coming from higher up or further away.
Again, the simple remedy is communication – up from trench, down to trench, across trenches. Only with that kind of broad-based transparency can anyone in the various departments be expected to be thinking and deciding strategically as an always-on way of being.
Early Communication about Impending Strategic Shifts
How to get there, organizationally? Here are two fundamental ways:
From the top, employ cascaded communications to announce potential or impending additions to or shifts in priority strategies. Do this as early as possible – better yet, earlier than that. Granted, there can be legitimate concerns about confidentiality (e.g., if a developing strategy is reliant on third-party alliances or on M&A activity). There can also be organizational anxiety should a potentially emerging focus or shift be revealed too far in advance of confirmation. Call this the panic-inducing, “what will it mean for me?” factor. I am not suggesting running roughshod over potential concern or unrest caused by revealing new strategies while they are still being vetted. Nonetheless, your organization’s culture of trust (you have built that, right?) should allow executives to be more open – with at least the mid-level managers and up – in supplying more “heads up” information. That transparency will invite and, in fact, demand that all in the communication loop (and, again, it should be as broad as possible) can begin thinking strategically about the fit of the new within the motions of the existing.
Devise strategic planning approaches (formal or informal, centralized or decentralized) that require frequent cross-functional collaboration about strategies and related execution readiness. Speaking of ambidexterity, the goal is to make sure that the left hand and right hand are running in concert. That means the orchestration not only of the tactical with the strategic at a high level but of complementary and co-reliant functions at the operational level. It also means ensuring that agreement exists about what are the strategic priorities for each function. Agreement starts with communication.
Of course, there is more to thinking strategically within role than simply being made aware of a broader landscape of current and potential strategic pursuits. Nevertheless, to foster more anticipatory decision-making in the departmental trenches, it is imperative to expand the vantage point into all strategic inputs from tunnel vision to “funnel vision.”