Adopt innovative engagement strategies to align teams and achieve strategic success.
New Rules for Strategic Engagement
By Howard M. Guttman and Richard S. Hawkes
Howard Guttman, author of When Goliaths Clash: Managing Executive Conflict to Build a More Dynamic Organization (Amacom, 2003), is the principal of Guttman Development Strategies, a Ledgewood, NJ-based management consulting firm specializing in high-performance teams, executive coaching, and strategic alignment. Richard S. Hawkes is a senior consultant at the firm, specializing in strategy formulation and implementation.
Key Strategic Questions
Strategy pundits and practitioners alike have long focused on two main questions:
What is strategy? In other words, what constitutes a legitimate statement of strategic direction?
How do you go about setting and implementing strategy?
However, a third, critically important question is often overlooked by those more interested in conceptual theory than in moving strategy from the drawing board to business results:
What organizational conditions must be in place to ensure strategy is effectively set and implemented?
A Shift in Strategic Thinking
The traditional "big-bang" approach to strategy is increasingly discredited. The familiar scenario of top teams heading off to a strategic retreat and returning with "new tablets" to impose on the organization is no longer viable. Instead, strategy is now seen as a dynamic, continuous organizational process, emphasizing ongoing refinement, updates, and enhancement.
This new approach requires a fresh set of rules to create the organizational conditions necessary for ongoing strategic dialogue and execution.
Five Rules for Strategic Engagement
Rule 1: Make Strategy a Collective Effort
At a $300 million environmental testing company, a new divisional CEO met with his management team to outline a comprehensive business strategy. Despite leading a detailed planning discussion and securing apparent agreement, within 12 hours, a key team member began looking for another job.
The reason? The CEO’s vision and plan, while compelling, were perceived as his vision—not their vision.
Engaging the team’s brainpower and sharing ownership in crafting strategy are essential. Even CEOs with a pre-formed "vision" must involve team members in validating assumptions and creating a sense of joint ownership. Mining the input of executives closest to market realities is crucial for effective strategy formulation.
Rule 2: Ensure Organizational Alignment
Strategic misalignment can derail an organization’s future. At a major oil company, senior executives' conflicting priorities led to internal chaos, resource misallocation, and strained external relationships.
Alignment ensures that teams at all levels speak with one voice, allocate resources effectively, and work within an agreed-upon strategic framework. For example, Philip Morris USA aligned its team around a clear mission and translated it into specific, achievable strategic and operational goals.
Rule 3: Resolve Issues Quickly
Unmanaged conflict at the top is one of the most insidious barriers to strategic response.
For instance, a pharmaceutical company’s strategic launch of a new product was derailed when two VPs became entrenched in their preferences for competing products. The resulting delay led to lost market share.
Organizations must address conflict swiftly to avoid internal gridlock that puts strategy at risk.
Rule 4: Build High-Performance Teams Across the Organization
High-performance teams are pools of synergy that bring together diverse perspectives, experiences, and skills to resolve business issues effectively. These teams challenge traditional hierarchical structures, shifting focus toward collective responsibility for business results.
Examples include Masterfoods USA’s brand teams, responsible for specific product lines, and Sara Lee Intimate Apparel’s customer-business teams, aligned with a customer-centric strategy.
High-performance teams share eight key attributes, including:
Clear missions, goals, and priorities.
The "right" players.
Defined roles and responsibilities.
A commitment to team success.
Agreed-upon decision-making processes.
Shared ownership of results.
Comfort in handling conflict.
Periodic self-assessment of progress.
Rule 5: Rethink Leadership Requirements
One often-overlooked leadership trait is the ability to manage conflict. Unmanaged conflict can derail even the most innovative and carefully formulated strategies.
For example, Lew Frankfort, CEO of Coach, successfully resolved entrenched cultural conflicts between design and manufacturing teams. By fostering collaboration, Frankfort transformed internal tensions into a competitive advantage, enabling the company to launch new products consistently and maintain rapid growth.
The Takeaway
A clear, incisive strategy is essential, but turning competitive advantage into strategic success requires understanding the new rules for strategic engagement. By focusing on alignment, collaboration, issue resolution, high-performance teams, and effective leadership, organizations can adapt to dynamic environments and drive sustainable success.
Published in the Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 25 No. 1, 2004, pp. 34-38.