Leading Takes More Than A Vision

It starts with communication. But doesn’t end there.

LEADING AN organization today has become more complex, requiring substantially more than stating a vision or articulating a strategy.

BY CHUCK MARTIN Darwinmag.com

In addition to being the facilitator between the inside and outside arenas associated with the corporation, the CEO and top management must juggle a variety of tasks to help their managers and employees become more effective in their jobs.

The CEO can define the strategy, but without a solid plan for communicating it to the people responsible for implementing it, the potential for disconnect is enormous. Successful leadership today means setting up an effective formal employee communications effort and understanding and making use of the informal ways in which employees gather and exchange information.

Even having a good formal internal communications department may not be enough to make a difference in achieving high performance. A study by the International Association of Business Communicators found that even in high-performing companies, a good communications program was less important in determining the success of a corporate initiative than several other factors that stem from the culture of the company itself. Those factors included clarity of purpose, openness and trust, effective information sharing and consistent behavior by company leaders.

The top executive also should act as the chief culture officer. If the CEO is not vigilant about making sure that the company’s strategy takes into account its culture — and that the culture is shaped so that it supports the strategy — the disconnect can lead to catastrophe. Executive leaders must take charge of implementing change and help employees understand the company’s values.

The strategy also should be created with input from throughout the organization. A chief executive must be able to develop and refine strategy on an ongoing basis to accommodate the realities of the organization and the marketplace, walking a fine line between being able to implement strategic initiatives quickly, and ensuring that those initiatives take into account the implications for all parts of the organization.

Once this is done, performance must be aligned with strategy through compensation and incentives. Unless people are compensated in ways that reinforce the organization’s priorities, performance can become disassociated from strategy. A CEO who has decided to reward employees if the company meets certain performance standards must do so in a way that links the reward to the goal. For example, a bonus could be paid in a separate check specifically identified as the employee’s share of the money the company gained by meeting a specific goal.

Senior management also is responsible for ensuring that the next tier of managers clearly communicates the corporate vision to their subordinates. Unless that link is strong, the message becomes distorted by every person who communicates it until by the time it gets to the individual worker, it is unrecognizable.

Internal and external information also must be leveraged efficiently. Both executives and managers should identify the sources of essential information and the most direct route for that information. Half the battle of communicating either up or down is in identifying who needs what information and how best to get it from its source to the right people.

And finally, HR and IT have to be made strategic. As the economy increasingly becomes knowledge-based, hiring the right people becomes more and more important. In some cases, it may be more useful to think in terms of hiring a person and tailoring the job for their unique set of skills rather than hiring for a job that requires having to hunt for just the right person. And because of the rapidly changing nature of technology, it’s especially important that senior managers stay in close communication with their technology and finance people when developing strategy.

Top managers then can stay more informed about technology capabilities that could enhance the business and align IT spending plans more closely with the business cycle. (An understanding of technology is the leadership skill managers would most like to enhance in themselves, based on a nationwide survey by my company, NFI Research.)

It is easily apparent to managers and employees at all levels whether their top management is doing these things, which can be an indicator of the future success of that organization and of those who work there.

Chuck Martin is syndicated columnist as well as chairman and CEO of NFI Research, a global research firm based in New Hampshire. He lectures around the world, and is a best-selling author of several business books, including his latest Managing for the Short Term (Doubleday, 2002). He can be reached at [email protected].

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