“We live in a global economy. To have a fighting chance, companies need to get every employee, with every idea in their heads and every morsel of energy in their bodies, into the game.” –Jack Welch (ex GM CEO)
In an article posted on Workforce.com entitled, ”Are Your Executives Sabotaging Your Strategy”, I’ve noted a couple interesting paragraphs below. Clear vision and communicating effectively through ‘knowing your audience’ are the keys here.
- ”Numerous “employee engagement” polls have documented morale problems in a growing number of organizations. Yet most CEOs we know are barely surprised—and barely worried—when the middle and lower ranks of their firm aren’t fully on board. The thinking of these CEOs is that as long as their top management team is behind the plan, the next layer of management and the layer below them (and on and on) will eventually fall in line. This thinking is both wrong and risky. The reason: Surprisingly, even the senior management team is often not truly committed to the CEO’s strategy either. During the past five years, we have seen this situation in over a dozen large companies whose leaders asked us to help them define and implement their strategy.”
- “The momentum required to transform a company starts at the top. When a firm embarks on a major shift in, or acceleration of, a strategy, the CEO must first get the senior management team to embrace the change. If they don’t, their direct reports will pick up on their cues that the strategy isn’t right and that they, too, don’t have to take it seriously. That attitude will then cascade down through the organization, level by level, no matter how many consultants the CEO brings in, how many town hall meetings he convenes, or how many internal e-mails and videos he produces imploring everyone to get behind the strategy.”
