Humanising Strategy
It’s a well-worn road….
In conference rooms everywhere, strategic consultants gather in conference rooms with their executive and Board clients, reviewing financial and operational data, considering factors in their external environments, making forecasts, and prepare lengthy strategies about the future direction of the business.
The emphasis is on these cognitive and business processes – analysis, KPIs, risk appetite, decision making, operational planning...
But at the end of this often expensive and time-consuming process, many organisations are challenged by the effectiveness of their strategic plan – were the cognitive processes wrong?
Not entirely.
But if we really want strategies to be effective, it’s time to pay more attention to the human side of strategy.
You’ve heard of Human Centered Design, so what about Human Centered Strategy?
The human side of strategy is at least as important as the cognitive side, though it receives far less attention than it deserves. Developing and implementing strategy affects the mindset, of your teams, regardless of whether they are the team leaders or the do-ers. Without also addressing some critical human elements, a strategy, no matter how grounded in analysis and fact, is going to fail.
To rebalance the equation, we need to pay more attention to the human side of strategy. We can do so along three key dimensions: Strategy Engagement, Strategy Impact and Strategy Ownership.
Strategy Engagement: Empowering your teams to have a voice, be heard, and counted in the strategic development process.
By involving your employees in the process, you can foster a sense of value, contribution, and ownership.
Strategy Impact: Considering the impact of your strategy on the mindset, the positions, and the relationships between your staff.
Recognising the impact of a new strategy on individuals is crucial for successful implementation throughout the entire process. Disengaged or disgruntled individuals can be the undoing of a great plan.
Strategy Ownership: Embedding the strategy deeply into the DNA of your teams, so they can deliver the promise.
More than just communication of the strategic plan, embedding ownership means trusting your frontline employees to implement against the plan, accepting that variations may occur and celebrating their successes to demonstrate how their wins contribute to the bigger plan.
The future: Human Centered Strategy.
By prioritizing cognitive functions, traditional strategy tends to be impersonal and seen as the domain of leadership to execute. However, this approach is no longer sufficient for modern strategic planning.
We need it to be more than that; human-centered, inclusive, and embraced by the entire organisation. Because in the end, a perfect strategy on paper can fail if it lacks human elements, while an imperfect but human centered strategy can be unstoppable.
