SYLVANIA, OH--(Marketwire - Nov 13, 2012) - Root, the strategy execution consulting company, today announced it has identified six trends that organizations are adopting to ensure the success of a strategy or initiative. The trends emerged following a yearlong analysis of engagement routines, by the Root Insights Group, that focused on identifying the inhibitors and accelerators to strategy adoption and success found across multiple industries and organizations of various sizes. The trends point out high-performing approaches to help leadership teams, managers, and individual contributors more quickly transform change and deliver results that support the strategic direction of the company.
"Regardless of size of organization, type of industry, strategic intent, or marketplace conditions, these six approaches can be leveraged by leaders to ensure their strategy will be successful," said Jim Haudan, chief executive officer of Root. "Strategies can be complex, and they require every single person in the organization -- regardless of level and role -- to understand, adopt, internalize, personalize, and evangelize that strategy to bring it to life. That can be a daunting task, but by zeroing in on these six key areas, organizations significantly increase their odds of implementing and sustaining a high-performing strategy."
Six Proven, High-Performing Approaches to Bringing Strategies to Life
1. Nurture a Strategy, Don't Launch It - Successful companies don't launch strategies... they nurture strategies. Learning, trial and error, and small wins are celebrated as new capabilities that drive results are developed. Organizations and strategists need to challenge, support, and be openly curious about each step of the strategy rollout to continue to hone and evolve the strategy over time.
2. Hardwiring the Last 100 Yards - Strategy must relate to the work individuals do to be successful. However, Root found that it rarely does. The most common refrain from people asked to engage with a new strategy is, "I don't understand what I am supposed to do differently." Organizations need to ensure that every level of the business, from leaders, to managers, to individual contributors, can directly connect their roles to delivering the strategy.
3. The Great Paradox of Accountability - Successful companies have solved this paradox of accountability and ownership of results by making co-ownership and accountability complementary, not a contradiction. Encourage co-accountability by using common metrics to track performance across complementary functions. Cross-functional collaboration creates a spirit of peer-to-peer accountability that allows companies to respond to new market conditions and to problem solve with higher-quality results, requiring less top-down intervention.
4. Return Receipt Required - Most strategies are passed to people with minimal interest in whether or not the receiver "gets" it. This lack of a feedback loop from the employee to leader is interpreted in two very powerful ways: The sender doesn't really care if the person or function gets it, and the sender lacks interest in hearing what is clear, understandable, and actionable and what is not. Successful execution through people has a constant return-receipt process.
5. Not Lost in Translation - Senior leaders spend months toiling over a strategy, immersed in the data and surrounded by a unique context, but then they tend to expect their people to view the final PowerPoint deck and understand what they have to do in a matter of minutes. Great strategists take the time to translate the strategy from the language of the expert to the language of the user and not view it as a "one-and-done" approach.
6. "Why" Matters More than You Think - When people understand the 'whys,' the 'whats' and 'hows' of a strategy, it instantly makes a lot more sense. In successful companies, employees at all levels are able to articulate where their company ranks in the industry and what makes them unique among their competitors. This awareness of the competition improves the quality of the hundreds of tiny decisions employees make every day because they are informed by marketplace realities.
The Root Insights Group used interviews, focus groups, and ethnography to uncover the engagement routines and human behaviors of high performance that support the adoption and successful execution of strategies. The analysis included both large and small organizations across a number of industries, including retail, wholesalers, and financial services.
Webinar - Six High-Performance Trends
Root is hosting a webinar on Wednesday, November 14 at 1pm ET/10am PT on the Six Trends for Strategy Success. Jim Haudan, CEO, and Bridget Stallkamp, Managing Director at Root, will provide details of the six high-performing trends, including best practices for how organizations can begin implementing these approaches in their businesses. Register to attend or to watch the replay.
About Root
Root is a strategy execution company that helps organizations engage their people as the catalyst and driver for change. Root does this by connecting people with complex strategies using creative and visual methods, transformative insights, and consulting know-how on strategy deployment and sustainment. With more than 20 years of capabilities developed from partnering with the world's largest businesses, Root has created a proven framework that consistently achieves clarity, ownership, and results. Based in Sylvania, Ohio, Root has been recognized as a Great Place to Work for eight consecutive years. Visit www.rootinc.com for more information or follow Root on Twitter: @therootinc.
Contact Information:
CONTACT:
Monica Rohleder
847-606-1973