Management idea

A common challenge is how to communicate the strategic plan to the rest of the company.  With great effort the senior team gets on the same page and begins to enjoy the fruits of being aligned.  The CEO and executives hold company-wide meetings to present the plan, kick off meetings share the the enthusiasm.  Yet, a couple of months later people complain no one ever communicates.

At the end of a strategic planning meeting with one of our clients we were asking each other how to communicate the plan better.  The team observed that one-on-one conversations work much better than group presentations.  People in a group clam up and there's little or no interaction.  Without interaction there is no understanding. But how do you find the time to have a one-on-one with every employee?

Someone kidded, if we got Pat to understand the plan the entire company would know our strategy by this afternoon.  Why?  Because Pat is a town crier - someone everyone knows and goes to, to find out what's happening. We quickly identified the company's ten strongest town criers and aligned each with a senior manager.  The client drew each these natural communicators into the the execution of the strategic plan. By focusing their one-on-one time with this employee subset, the company got message to every employee.    

RUN WITH THE Big dogS™

Every week the strategic planning facilitators of Myrna Associates interact with the executive teams of the best managed mid-sized companies in America.  The weekly RUN WITH THE BIG DOGS™ newsletter shares an idea generated in one of those meetings. The companion  RUN WITH THE BIG DOGS™ CEO interviews discusses a single management topic with a mid-sized company leader.