In more than 30 years of serving as a management advisor to companies of every size worldwide, I have yet to encounter an organization that does not struggle with some “communication” challenges. Although this can impact companies from several different angles, one communication breakdown has the most significant impact on the business’s overall success.
The lack of a sharply focused, easily understood, and extremely well-communicated vision and strategy for growth.
In most businesses, the executive team constantly discusses the vision and strategy. It’s part of their meetings. They do quarterly reviews, and offsites focus on them. However, if you go just one or two layers down in the organization, frequently, nobody knows the vision and how they are supposed to implement the strategy.
Remember this:
Without a clearly communicated vision, there is no way to achieve alignment across the organization, act strategically, empower fast decision-making, or create a high level of accountability.
When people do not know where they’re going, it is impossible for them to get there successfully!
The critical point here is that to communicate the organization’s vision and strategy effectively, you must always talk about them. Use multiple communication channels at all levels of the organization, delivering a consistent and focused message.
I once had the CEO of a company ask me, “When do you know that you have communicated the vision enough?” I replied, “When you get to the point that if you have to explain it one more time, you’ll get sick to your stomach… that’s when the lowest person in your organization just heard the vision for the first time.”
The answer is simple: communicate, communicate, communicate… and then communicate some more.
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