Episode #2 - Presenting your company's strategy to your team when you haven’t understood it yourself
Hello and welcome to Tricky Management Situations !
In this series of articles, Onirio explores, for you, all those tricky, even improbable (and yet real!) situations that the manager's job can throw at us.
In each episode, you'll find tips on how to step back and manage your problems 😉
After a particularly uncomfortable first situation, you're now in a bind with your team!
If you haven't already done so, you can :
Read all episodes published to date
Discover theOnirio team and follow us on LinkedIn
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive future articles by email
Today's struggle: How to communicate your company's strategy to your team when you don't understand it yourself!
Does your team often express confusion about the company's direction and its strategy? In fact, you're not very clear about it yourself!
The strategic plan for the next three years has just been communicated to the entire managerial line. Your leadership asks each manager to cascade this information down to their teams for clarity and purpose. However, you're feeling uneasy, as the information provided to you seems unclear…
What to do?
It's essential to talk about it!
As a manager, it’s your duty to:
Understand your company's strategic orientations;
Be clear about what is expected from your team
Provide a sense of purpose to your colleagues
A lack of understanding regarding strategy is a factor that contributes to low team engagement
So, not only should you communicate, but you should communicate regularly!
⛔ Mind the mistakes!
Observing the cascade of information in an organization reveals a wealth of poor practices.
So, no, you won't be that manager who :
Doesn't communicate anything to the team because, as we all know, "they're never interested".
Forwards the executive document by email to the entire team "for information" or "FYI".
Invites a senior manager to speak at the team meeting, because "he'll talk about it better than me".
Filters certain details "to avoid causing alarm" or "to avoid tricky questions".
Reads corporate presentation without connecting it linking to the team's activities
✅ How to effectively communicate the strategy?
Before diving in, two tips!
Do your research and ask your leadership the right questions
Start with the basics, ensuring clarity on your company's business model. A useful exercise is to fill out the business model canvas for your company:
Then, determine how the strategic orientations change this business model and the impact on the team's missions and roles:
What needs to change compared to the current situation?
What should be improved?
Should we launch new projects?
Which projects or activities should stop?
Struggling with some of these questions? You now know what to inquire about with your management 😉
Prepare a pitch tailored to your audience
Talking strategy is an act of communication that requires preparation! To help you, here's a framework for "pitching":
What next?
Discussing the company’s strategy is only the first step. The real challenge is operationalizing it within the team. And that presents a series of challenges for the manager 🙂
To dive deeper into breaking down the strategy into objectives and indicators, check out the course Onirio produced in collaboration with Openclassrooms!
You can access it here!
TheArtist / Warner Bros
See you soon for the next episode!
In each episode, Onirio explores a managerial situation and gives you advice on how to take a step back and adopt the right reflexes!
What's next? Taking responsibility for a team member's mistake in front of a customer
To find all the episodes already published, go to here !
To discover discover upcoming management challenges, you can follow us on our LinkedIn page or subscribe to our mailing list below.
Have you experienced managerial difficulties? Inspire us!
We're sure you've been in plenty of situations that would merit an article 😉. And we're always looking for inspiration for our next episodes. So drop us a line with a description of your troubles! We'll be delighted to explore your situations!
Onirio 's 💙 exploration of this management galley was brought to you by Jérôme Labastie.