Strategy Drains employees of precious time
In our dynamic world of ever-shifting threats, opportunities and industry level changes, time is the most precious resource. Time is something that can never be increased or replaced once it’s gone. In this light, strategy takes a portion of this precious resource from the employees that will be required to implement it. While this investment needs to be made, the fact that it will require time commitments from line organizations is summarily dismissed. It is not surprising to observe that when this happens, the line organizations become demoralized and exhausted while they try to implement strategy while simultaneously doing their regular, day to day tasks.
Created by people who have no idea what the real challenges are that the organization is facing.
Many of the issues that plague the effectiveness of strategy to significantly improve the organization, is that it is often developed by a group of people that are removed from the day to day issues the organization faces. Strategy development is largely the responsibility of senior leaders which, while are forward facing, do not experience the headaches line organizations face.
And even when line organizations are invited to participate in strategy development, they often feel pressure to simply agree with whatever objectives senior leaders select and the invariably aggressive timelines and paltry budgets, if any at all, that are committed to.
Questions to Consider
Are your employees feeling the agony of implementing strategic objectives? If they are, have you identified why that is and have you considered what you can do to alleviate it?