As we approach the next fiscal year, most of you are putting into place new programs, processes and practices that your organization believes will drive greater success. High performance companies are always thinking about how to improve. To do so requires great clarity regarding the long-term potential and direction of the company, or a strategy.
Once you have that, it comes down to implementation. And on this point, most organizations are challenged. Seventy to eighty percent of strategic plans are labeled failures because they don’t produce change or results. The fact that the clients I work with usually double their businesses over the course of their plan implementation stands apart from the average statistics for good reason. It is more than a plan. It translates a strategy into an action plan. It is my belief that strategy isn’t valuable unless it’s implemented. Every strategy needs to be broken down into the initiatives or change programs, and they need to be defined at the action step, timeline, and accountability levels. In other words, strategy becomes actionable and accountable.
Now we need to ask ourselves, who is doing the implementation? Are they passionate and engaged? Do they produce high quality outcomes? Are they committed to the company and its success? Do they know what is expected of them? Do they have the skills to do it well? Do they make the people around them better? If you are not answering yes to these questions, you are leaving money on the table.
Post Covid, there was a dearth of hirable employees. It was important to keep the company running and the focus was on finding people to do the work and incentivizing them to come to work for you. Five years later, we have put some distance between the mass chaos of the immediate pandemic and follow up years and find ourselves having to assess our associate dynamic. In the process of filling jobs, did we strengthen the culture or suboptimize it? Did we hire promotable people? Did we train future leaders effectively? If not, our future is limited by our people. They should be our strongest asset. Are they?
To be clear, this is not just an assessment of the quality of the employees but also the quality of the opportunity your workplace provides for them. Great people seek great opportunities. Does your workplace provide them with a voice, a feeling of connectedness, and fulfillment of career goals? Those organizations that do, find they get the best from the people they have.
The place to start is to assess the current employee group and their relative performance and contribution to the company. I recently wrote an article about employee expectations and how to assess your workforce and you can access it here.
Once you have identified the high potential associates and leaders, it is time to assess culture. What do they want the culture to be? Just like you would develop your business model and customer service to cater to the most important customers, your goal is to define your culture that appeals to the most effective, productive, and committed employees. It is important to ask them and see what themes emerge. It is less likely to be about money and more likely to be around working in a culture that values them—encourages their voice, makes them feel connected to a higher joint purpose and offers a path for personal and professional growth. So, do you? Does your organization surround them with quality leaders? Give them special projects that influence organizational outcomes? Invest in their growth with mentors and training?
All the planning, best intentions, assignments, and coaching are not enough to maximize strategic outcomes if you don’t have a culture made up of high performers who are unbridled to achieve their potential.
According to an article in the November/December issue of Harvard Business Review, titled Why Employees Quit, there is a “…widespread failure to provide gratifying work experiences. To stick around and keep giving their best, people need meaningful work; managers and colleagues who value, respect, and trust them; and opportunities to gain experience, excel and advance their careers.” You can read the full article here.
Assuming your organization is operating under a viable strategic plan and has set key objectives for 2025, if you want to make it a reality and not an activity, focus on the people. This takes work, listening, and reframing the relationship between high-potential employees and work opportunities, defining a growth-minded culture along the way.
Let us know how we can help you dig into this important topic and begin to see accelerated results.
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