The Real Reason Strategic Plans Fail? It Starts at the Top.

Jonathan Morgan: [00:00:00] Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Strategy Gap. Uh, today's conversation is gonna be a follow up from our previous one where we really talked through a preview of the results. For the state of strategy execution survey and benchmark report. So if you haven't listened to that yet, go give it a listen.

Be helpful context for today's conversation or give it a listen afterwards, uh, with the additional information that we'll be talking through today. Also, we'll have a link in the description, but go give the guide a download. Read it. Look through the statistics, a lot of great information that was pulled through surveying, uh, over 250 strategy leaders really about all the things that work and don't work in the world of strategic planning and strategy execution.

We've been really excited about the results and the response thus far. I've heard a lot of great feedback and, uh, certainly looking forward to continue discussing the results today. Uh, so Joe, just, uh, off, off the top here. I know, uh, you, last time we talked it, you hadn't even seen the survey yet, right? It was a blind reaction to our conversation.[00:01:00] 

You've had a little bit of time between now and then to actually review the results. I know we've talked about it a couple of times. Uh, just wanna see if you have any immediate reactions beyond what we talked about last time.

Joe Krause: Uh, the, the main thing is that I, I. I now am going into customer engagements with, uh, the information in the back of my mind. Uh, so looking at the different pillars as things to take a look for, um, doing that and having them, uh, with my conversations with, uh, customers at conferences, et cetera. Um, it just kind of, uh, helps emphasize or reiterate some of the, some of the pillars that were, uh, sorry.

The dog is deciding

Jonathan Morgan: dog. Joe's dog loves the report too, so.

Joe Krause: My dog loves, loves strategy, execution. Um, and she doesn't bark. She barks once a day and today, right now was the moment she needed to do it. Um, but it's very helpful just mainly from the fact that everything that was discussed in the, um, report and mainly the one that we're gonna be talking about today, alignment and leadership, um, it just helps me be more aware of it to ensure that it doesn't get in the way of.

Our customer's success. 'cause there's so many things [00:02:00] that can go wrong with strategy and execution that you have to kind of be there and look around the dark corners. And this report does give you a sense of what those dark corners might be so that you get ahead of them and ensure you have the best chance to be successful.

Jonathan Morgan: Yeah. I think honestly that's a, that's a good takeaway for others to think about as well. Um, sometimes, and I'll admit I have this problem as well. You read through these benchmark reports, you read through blog posts, studies, whatever they may be. I. Anything. This is neat, but what am I supposed to do with this?

There's actionable enough information in the guide and through these conversations where we don't just want it to be a bunch of statistics. We want it to be information that you can implement, so if you're having this particular problem, you can find strategies to fix them and implement among your team.

It's also good proof points for information as you're going through that journey in your organization, right? If you're having a lot of issues with. Leadership adoption or progress tracking, or whatever the case may be, there might be good information that you can take to sell internally to your team and use that as information for moving forward.

Alright, well enough of the [00:03:00] introduction, today's conversation we're actually gonna be going through over the next few episodes, each of the key pillars that we're highlighted in this guide, because after our last conversation, we try to pack as much into that 30 minutes as possible. And we got off the recording and said, you know what, we could easily do an episode on each one of these topics.

So that's exactly what we're going to do. Um, but before we go into that, just to, to recap what the key pillars were in case you haven't listened to it or in case it's, or haven't listened to the episode or reviewed the document, or if it's been a little bit. I'm gonna go through, um, last time we talked about five, there actually were six key pillars that we identified through the benchmark report.

So we're gonna go through each of those quickly and then we'll dive into the first one in more detail. The first pillar called out alignment and leadership. Strong vision and engaged leaders are key to keeping teams aligned and driving strategy forward. Number two, the importance of collaboration.

Breaking down silos and working together fuels innovation and leads to better results [00:04:00] on strategy. I. Number three, the ever important accountability. Clearly defining roles and ownership helps teams move faster and stay focused on their goals. Number four, progress tracking. Keeping an eye on real-time updates and key metrics ensures things stay on track.

Number five, continuous improvement, regular check-ins, ROI. Assessments and updates to planning cycles keep long-term success and focus. And number six, data and technology. Leveraging technology and data-driven insights improves alignment, decision making and execution. It. So a lot of great insights there.

Most of those things, right, from a brief sentence, sound pretty obvious, but as we dig into them, there's a lot of good insights in there. Things that organizations maybe say they do but don't do in practice in ways that you can overcome some more particular challenges in each one of those. So. Today's conversation, we're gonna focus on that first pillar of alignment [00:05:00] in leadership.

Certainly this is something that a lot of organizations struggle with, um, at both of those keywords, right, either alignment or leadership level. And it's a very important one to start off with because as strategy often is created at the top, sometimes the failure often starts at the top. And it's a good way for leaders that are listening to the call to make sure that they're not the culprits and driving a lot of the.

Future failures that we'll be talking about, uh, in the, in the, uh, subsequent topics and conversations. So with this Joe, really focusing on leadership, I wanna revisit one of the conversations and topics we discussed on our last episode. And that was the findings from the survey around the top five reasons that strategic plans fail.

There's tons of reasons out there, tons of good feedback that we received. But the top five that we got were, number one, lack of leadership. Number two, unclear objectives. Number three, poor time management. Number [00:06:00] four, insufficient resources. And number five, inadequate communication. These are so important in my, in my opinion for this conversation because pretty much all five of those stem from the role of leadership and, and what they do within planning and execution, right?

Uh, if they're not there to lead it, that's lack of leadership. If there's unclear objectives, those should be set from leadership. Poor time management. They're not giving guidance throughout the organization around how to manage time in relation to planning, execution and sufficient resources. They're not giving enough time, money, resources to these initiatives and inadequate communication.

Everyone's been there. You talk about the plan, then never revisit it. But Joe, what are your thoughts as you've had some time to sit with, you know, these top five reasons, the rest of the information from the study and kind of what you've seen throughout your career in planning and execution?

Joe Krause: I think if we look at the list, because it's not really rank order, but I like to look at things as like, what's the easiest [00:07:00] thing to fix? Um, and it might be a little bit, uh, contrary to what you might think, but I feel like the lack of leadership is one that I see. I. Um, especially as we've come out, come out of Covid, but it's been something that's been present ever since I've joined Achieve it over a decade ago.

Is you, maybe you'd be surprised or maybe not. The amount of times where I'm going to a client site and they are having everybody join, let's call it the leadership team directors, all that, and they're all in a room, 45, 50 people and they're like doing a big to-do around the launch of the plan. And I'll pull the, the executive leaders aside, or even the person that's maybe the director of strategy and, and explain to them that the kickoff, um, how you set the day, like how you start this conversation with this group is so critically important.

Um, so I need you to be able to articulate why we're all gathered here today, um, why you've engaged with Achieve It, because ultimately we're, uh, a way to facilitate execution, um, and then what their expectations are, right? So not a really big ask, it's like, why are we here? Why are we doing this? And then what do we, what do I expect from all of you?

If I, I would [00:08:00] be very generous. I'd said 30% of those conversations that I hear, um, really rise to the occasion to inspire the folks in the room because they're coming in with a, a certain understanding of, oh, not this again, or, I don't have time for this. And it's your job as leaders to inspire folks that this plan is critical to the success of the organization, and you owe it to yourself to take a moment to write what that sounds like.

Um, it'd be great to come from the director of strategy. It would sound even better if it came from the CEO, the chief Strategy Officer, whoever is the. A person that's most involved with this, they need to be able to say those three things on a regular basis and they just don't see it. Or to speak to another, um, uh, top reasons why plans fail.

Inadequate communication. They do a decent job during the day, but then it's never said again. I was at a conference recently at the American Congress for Healthcare Executives and, uh. There was a, a, a group talking about how the CEO of their organization, a large hospital group, goes and meets with all different groups, weekly, makes it a priority to meet with like five or 10 different groups every single week.[00:09:00] 

And he has the same talking points every single time. He connects with each of the different groups, talking about how they're one system. What he expects and how he appreciates what they do. And he has it every single time. And over the course of time, people have come to expect it and they can rattle off what he said because he says it so often.

That's what that needs to look like. And honestly, I don't, I rarely see it. So when I do see it, it piques my interest. But for all you leaders out there, that's something that you really can take control of. You have to take the time to write out the message, and you have to make sure that you're saying it over and over again to every single party.

Jonathan. I mean, that's my list. That's my number one. I mean, you've, you've done this for quite a long time as well, so what have you seen in terms of that one or other reasons why plans fail as maybe, uh, something for our listeners to focus on

Jonathan Morgan: Yeah, I, I, I started smiling as you were talking through, because Joe and I talk about this all the time. We were visiting a customer, oh gosh, seven years ago probably. And Joe's not kidding. He's, uh, going into every engagement. He talks to the leaders we work [00:10:00] with and say, Hey, how you set the tone for the day really drives the importance.

And that's not just for when you're bringing somebody outside in, but it's anytime you're having these conversations. And I, I'll never forget this example of the guy stands in front of the room, he said. Hey everybody, this is Joe and Jonathan. Take it away. Right? Nothing, right. It was crickets after that.

There was no setting the tone for the importance of it, no setting the tone for what it meant to him, what it meant for the rest of the team. So I did have to comment on that 'cause I know Joe remembers it vividly and, uh, not how you want to do it.

Joe Krause: Well, that there has to be a sincerity, right? I mean, if he, if if he doesn't believe it and he's in charge of this thing, why am I gonna believe it? And this sounds like a. A crazy example and in parallel, but we have, uh, an, uh, an Italy, I dunno if you ever our listeners have ever been to one of these before.

They're usually in big cities and it's like this supermarket with every Italian delicacy in the world. Um, there's one that opened nearby and, uh, we were there recently and we were kinda struggling with some of the different options. And the gentleman front, behind the counter was like, so sincere and he was like, have you tried this?

Have you tried that? He [00:11:00] goes, I had this with dinner the other night, and he was just so excited about all the different things that he had to offer. It wasn't his stores, it was a corporate chain. Right. And he was so convincing, so sincere that we probably bought like five extra things we didn't need to buy.

Uh, just because I believed everything he said and everything that he did recommend to us, by the way, was pretty good. Uh, but the point is I felt that he really wanted this. And so I. Ask yourself, when you see somebody come up and say, I need you to do this difficult thing, are you even convinced they want to do it?

Because sometimes, uh, based on what I've seen, I couldn't tell you if they, if they want to be there themselves. So if you're not inspired yourself, how are the heck are you gonna inspire 50 leaders who have every other reason? To not pray, pay attention to this strategic plan. So this is a tough medicine to take sometimes, but ultimately ask yourself, record the session, if you will, and look back and ask yourself, would I be convinced based on my performance if I was sitting in that audience?

And if you did spectacular, and if you didn't use it as an opportunity to reflect and realize this is, this is one of the easier things to fix. [00:12:00] Ultimately having a rousing speech, expecting, you know, explaining why we're here and what I expect. Should we just roll off your tongue? And if it doesn't, you have to ask yourself, why is that?

Do I not believe this? Is the plan? Too complicated? But that's one of the main reasons. If you are failing with your plan, you're not even getting outta the starting gate because everyone's just like, nah, I don't, I don't, I don't believe it. I'll just hold my breath until this goes away.

Jonathan Morgan: Yeah, and, and that's why, to answer your question more directly to me, inadequate communication is the most important one. Mostly because good communication can fix, largely fix the other ones, right? If you're constantly talking about strategy and importance of it. People are gonna make their own mind up about whether it's important or not, right?

And if you're, if objectives aren't clear, if there's poor time management, or if there's insufficient resources, unless you're building a new facility where you don't have a big enough budget, most of those decisions for time management and resources comes down to prioritization. If you don't feel like something's important, you're not gonna prioritize it very highly.

So inadequate [00:13:00] communication really enforces that. People know that. We're always gonna talk about this as Joe Joe talked about. We're always gonna mention these three things or I know that if I'm responsible for providing an update every month or every quarter, that it's gonna be talked about every month or every quarter as well.

It's not that it goes into some ether and disappears, and I have no idea whether anyone's ever reading my updates. 'cause if I don't feel like confident that people are reading my updates. I'm gonna put less information into 'em. I'm going to make them less often there's gonna be less personal accountability 'cause they don't understand what's in it for them, the old WM question.

So communication solves that and really makes sure that you're keeping it front of mind and it can go ahead.

Joe Krause: No, I was gonna say ultimately, I mean this is another easy thing to, to map out, and I think I've mentioned it before in the podcast, but like, take a, take a page from the project management, uh, book. Really figure out before the plan is launched, what your communication strategy's gonna be. Pick your points.

Are we gonna have town halls? Are we gonna have weekly meetings? Are we gonna have [00:14:00] this, whatever that leads to look at, write it down. Um, and create, for lack of a better term, like a content calendar to say here the CEO's gonna send a monthly note. Chief strategy officer is gonna send a weekly note. We're gonna have an, uh, a, a monthly town hall where people can submit questions and we're gonna showcase the plan, like put it all on paper so that it doesn't, it's not left for chance.

'cause if you do leave at the chance, it will not get done. Or if it does get done, it'll happen once or twice. And then there won't be consistency. 'cause that's the big thing here is it's anybody could do this one month or two months. How can you consistently do it nine months, 12 months? Because it takes about that much time for people to really understand, oh, they mean business.

This isn't going anywhere because Mo, some people in your organization are just gonna wait for this to go away. And if your plan is truly the reason why you're going to either be a great company or maybe a mediocre company, there is no. Room for error on execution. You owe it to yourself to make sure they care.

Um, and if you try everything and they still don't care, then it helps you understand maybe who's in it for the long term, who isn't, et cetera. So there's really no downside to having nice, [00:15:00] crisp, consistent communication, and once again, an easy problem to solve.

Jonathan Morgan: Yeah. Honestly, I think that relates to another important stat that was in this section related to alignment and leadership, and that's where 91% of the leaders surveyed said that a lack of strategic vision is a key reason that plans fail. The word vision, mission, vision, everything that's related to that sometimes maybe gets a, a bad wrapper is focused in another bucket.

I don't think that 91% of these organizations don't have a vision for their organization. That's maybe a separate conversation about whether people actually know and understand that. I think what this often relates to more in an organization is that. when well constructed for execution, there is that alignment.

Things are connected. They are well thought out for a cause and effect, right? If I do this well, that'll move this needle. It'll move this metric, it'll move this area of our organization forward. Whereas if something doesn't have [00:16:00] strategic vision. It's a bunch of ideas and initiatives on a list with really no structure for how we're gonna move things forward.

So, Joe, I'm happy to go wherever you wanna go with this topic, but what have, what's been your experience with, you know, well constructed plans from a vision standpoint versus ones that maybe aren't so well constructed and are just full of ideas, great ideas, but with no true direction behind them.

Joe Krause: I mean, if we're being brutally honest, I don't think a lot of leaders know where they're going. Um, if you go to any conference in any discipline, and I go to quite a few, everything's ai, right? AI to the point where it's. It's almost a joke where the, like, how can there be this much sub subject matter expertise on such a, um, uh, bleeding edge topic?

Because at the end of the day, it's still very bleeding edge. I mean, yes, it's pretty cool to use chat GPT to make my dog into a Disney princess or something to that effect for my mother-in-law for her birthday. Um, that's great. But as far as like revolutionary, uh, revolutionizing every single business, we're not quite there yet.

But you would not think that looking at some of these conferences. [00:17:00] So I finally saw the, uh. The, uh, the example of that not being the case. So I, I saw the, uh, folks, the, one of the, the lead doctors from the Mayo Clinic, from their, uh, Phoenix location for, for, for those that are wondering, the Mayo Clinic has locations around the world and, and a variety in the US and obviously they're probably one of the top, if not the top, uh, thought leaders in the, in the space around healthcare.

They were showcasing how they were able to use ai, AI technology to diagnose pancreatic cancer roughly a year earlier than normal methods could up to this point. 'cause for those that have ever had family members or friends that have, uh, been inflicted with pancreatic cancer, it's notoriously very hard to detect.

Right. It's just kinda one of those things that, but at the time you find out you have it, it's almost too late. To get a year head start on those types of things is pretty crazy. And they explained all the inner details about why AI was able to do this, but then I finally was like, ah, now that is truly a, a competitive advantage for this one group.

So I think a lot of folks are building plans knowing in the back of their mind they don't really know if it's the right thing because oh, there's so much [00:18:00] disruption. Um, and so there's a little bit of lack of clarity on their end. And that kind of comes through in the plan. If you don't truly know where you're going, 'cause you don't know enough about the subject matter, how can you expect to make a good plan?

So I guess the recommendation I have here is that yes, the shiny object, ai, things like that are gonna be fantastic and probably should need to have a part of your plan. But you also have to remember that the business that you have today, and probably over the next few years, isn't gonna fundamentally change based on that one thing alone.

And, uh, having the shiny object take control over your plan leads to fan the plans that fail. And so, Jonathan, how have you, how have you seen people, uh. Navigate the, the interestingness of a shiny object versus maybe the more mundane, which is how do we grow our existing business? How do you make a plan fresh and interesting and have vision, but at the same time realize that we have a business to run.

Jonathan Morgan: Yeah. Well first I have a comment. I have not used, uh, Chachi Pet to create Disney Princess versions of my dog.

Joe Krause: It's for my mother-in-law. Okay. She likes it. She's into that sort of thing. It's not, I don't have 'em around my house, but [00:19:00] yes, it is, uh, it's not my proudest moment.

Jonathan Morgan: I did, this is a fun one for listeners out there. I did ask Chad GBT to create an image of what it thought I looked like based off of prompts, which is a pretty fun one. So give it a shot. It'll just create a person and based off of the types of conversations you're having. So, so give it a go. But to your question, I think, um, and I'll actually have to look back.

We had a great episode that was talking about, uh, this topic around, you know, more of the shiny objects, the innovative ideas. Versus the more practical ones. I think it has to be a balanced approach. I think really with anything, it's like if you're, you're trying a new diet or workout plan, you can't just go all in on one thing and the newest fad, it's, maybe it works for a short stint, but it's not gonna be sustainable 'cause it's not really who you are as an individual and what you're really focused on and may not often mesh in with the other aspects of your life.

From a business standpoint, that is absolutely true, or whatever type of organization you are. You can't just totally turn [00:20:00] around a cruise ship and go a completely different direction. It's gonna take pivots, it's gonna take slow steps towards that. So finding a balance in your plan where, you know, maybe I'm just gonna throw out a percentage, maybe 80% of your plan is core business items, uh, core initiatives that you're making incremental improvements on.

And then the other 10 to 20%, that's the extra initiatives that you're really trying to revolutionize the things that you're doing. Now, there may be scenarios where you have to make a complete shift as an organization, but for the average company or average organization, you can't just go all in in one direction and abandon everything else that you're doing well and abandon those incremental improvements.

So it's finding that balance. Um, and I, and I say one thing that often comes with that. Is even if you do want to go all in in a certain direction or do more than that 20% new ideas, you're not often gonna have the buy-in from the rest of your organization and from the employees. So yeah, [00:21:00] maybe the leadership team, maybe you're all in on this new idea.

I. But for these individuals and teams that have been working on the, on incremental improvements and in these focus areas, for them to all of a sudden be told that, nevermind everything we've been working on for the past five years is out the window and we're shifting focus, that can be very disruptive toward for them.

So you have to think through what's the balance, right? How do I test it out? How do I get buy-in? How do I make them understand how this is important and then slowly navigate us towards that direction.

Joe Krause: Because I mean, the topic of vision statements comes up quite a bit. I mean, that does go a long way in helping set the course for the plan because, um, think of the most innovative companies that you can think of, the ones that you watch the commercial and you go, that's really interesting. I saw one yesterday actually.

Uh, UPS, the UPS store. Um, in my mind I'm like, oh, they just, you know, you go there, you ship a package, but then they explain. We're like, your extra set of hands for your small business, we can do, and they listed like 20 different things that a UPS store can do that I really didn't know they could do. So somebody sat in a room one day and, and looked at their strategic planning and go, wow, people only know [00:22:00] us for this one thing.

We do shredding, we do, uh, notaries, we do, um, uh, uh, uh, mailboxes so you can have an actual, um, physical address. These are the types of things that maybe some people know that ultimately. Not everybody knew. So if you think about what their vision statement probably looks like, it's how do we become like the true partner to small business into the community?

And that then broadens the, the aperture for the plan, right? It's not just how do we ship packages better? It's like, no, how can we make when you're here, how can we take the burden off of you as a small business owner? I thought that was a really clever commercial. As you know, I've, I've, I've gone to the UPS store a thousand times and the fact that I learned something was, was a true thing.

And then Warby Parker is another one that I thought was interesting. I saw. Uh, the other day, and I did look it up and it, and, and word for word is their vision statement is, we believe that buying glasses should be easy and fun. It should leave you, um, happy and good looking with money in your pocket. We also believe that everyone has the right to see, so this one's a little bit more elaborate, but ultimately it helps you guide your strategic plan.

'cause you have to ask yourself, is the thing that I'm [00:23:00] putting in the plan or advocating for, does it make buying glasses easy and fun? Does it make it easier and more fun? Is it helping, uh, customers save money? And also there's a, a bit of a charity component there as well. How do we make sure we donate a certain number of glasses?

But if you're struggling with creating a plan that is like revolutionary or at least getting people's attention, sometimes spending time crafting a proper vision statement allows you to orient what you're doing. It's, it could run the risk sometimes if you're spending. Days and weeks and months trying to craft the perfect vision statement where you're, you know, is the thug go there and the a go there, like I'm talking about sitting in a room and saying, what the heck do we want to be when we grow up?

That is an infectious type of, um, of, um, excitement that can exist in the organization. If you do that well, the plan will be better and the people that are executing and are really gonna believe in it. So, if you're struggling, that might be a way to kind of reverse engineer a solution as well.

Jonathan Morgan: No, I love that. I, I think it's a good example too, because I think most people have heard of Warby Parker, whether you do or don't wear glasses. And I like how, [00:24:00] you know, hopefully their strategic initiatives and their plans relate back to those core principles. And, and the real question, I think people understand the, the basics of why this is important, but from our statistics, real reason that this.

Whole category comes out as important is 'cause a third of teams said they're not aligned with their organization's overall strategic direction. Now if you flip that around the other way, it's like, okay, well two thirds are, that's actually pretty good. But when you think about it in a different way, if you're, you know, say playing tug of war and you've got two people pulling on one rope and one person pulling on the other rope, the, the two people are probably going to win most of the time.

But how much harder does it make that for your organization? To move in that direction when you essentially have dead weight pull in the opposite direction. So a lot of reasons this could be the case. A lot of reasons we talked through today. Joe, what are some examples that you've seen of kind of teams being completely misaligned and how that impacts growth and success?

Joe Krause: Yeah, because one third of teams aren't aligned, so think of one [00:25:00] third of your teams in your organization. Um, I, I'm, I'm firmly in the belief that every team plays a role, but as you can imagine, especially with smaller companies, revenue generation is such a big thing. Shipping product is a big thing. So imagine like you have, let's just say you have three teams and one of them isn't aligned, and that's your sales team.

You can, you can kind of, uh, figure out how that that scenario is going to end. Um, so ultimately what you need to figure out is which parts of the organization. Who is the one third, right? So there's a variety of ways to do that. Those visits that I mentioned where the leadership team is going and talking with people and, and, and hopefully creating a space where they're honest helps you identify who the third might be.

Survey technology is another great way to be able to do this, to understand where you need to spend your time. And if you're finding out that it's one of those mission critical departments, where There really, you cannot execute the strategy without your product team being aligned. Then you have to spend an inordinate amount of time to figure out what the root cause of that distrust is, or the alignment and aim to fix it.

So if you're gonna do a survey [00:26:00] and you get results back that you don't particularly like, but they are hitting true. You owe to yourself as a leader to write down what those things are and say, we heard you. Here are the three things that we have identified as a, a barrier for you to really buy in. Here are the three things we're gonna do to counteract that.

And I'm gonna, my commitment to you is on a weekly basis, we're gonna give you updates on this and it's going to be different this time because we're moving towards a new way of working that is something that I don't see a lot of people doing. Um, they don't know who the one third is. I guarantee you have some teams that are not aligned.

So figure out the best way to find out who they are. Listen to what they're saying and sometimes what they're saying is gonna be tough medicine again, and you're not gonna like it. But realizing that that's an opportunity versus a threat. Um, have that conversation with them and really say back to them, here's what I heard you say, here's what we're gonna do differently.

You have my commitment and here's how I'm gonna show that to you. Seems simple, but it rarely happens. So. That if that is not happening, then you're basically on borrowed time and you cannot be one of the best organizations in the world if one third of your teams, [00:27:00] 'cause that's bigger, the bigger the organization you're in.

That one third starts to become a, a, a, a real, uh, uh, a headwind on you. You need, you need all a tailwind you can get, and you, you owe it to yourself to find out who that one third is. So what do you, what have you seen, Jonathan, in terms of finding out who the one third is? Because I know you definitely do a lot of our.

Um, HR functions here at Achieve It. You do a lot of interesting things related to, uh, making sure are the people that work here are engaged. What are other ways to ensure we can locate areas that maybe need a little extra attention?

Jonathan Morgan: Yeah, I think it's a great question, and most of the things you said apply. I'm gonna cheat a little bit because I have more information. Uh, we also had about a third of respondents say that their goals aren't fully aligned with departmental objectives. So like their individual goals or their team goals don't roll up to the company goals.

So I'm, I wanna focus on that for this answer as. Think about not just who are the uh, you know the detractors, right? If you're in a survey, remember there's the four quadrants of the [00:28:00] promoters and the neutrals and the detractors. That's maybe a little bit easier to find through either conversations or surveys.

But also take a look at how your plan and the communication, and sometimes even your, your compensation or goal structure is set up. See what of those teams and individuals are misaligned from the goals and initiatives that you have said are important for the organization. Right? So if you have. We'll go back to the AI conversation if you have all these initiatives related to how you're gonna move forward, AI in your product, but then there's a certain team that has nothing that's related to AI in there.

Well, that's a misalignment, right? They might be working with something complete opposite direction that doesn't support the initiatives of the other teams of the rest of the organization. That's one example. There's plenty of other ones that you can easily look through your plan. And the easiest way to do this is if you think about your plan as a hierarchy or as we talk about as a tree, you start from the top, you move down, and each level you [00:29:00] move down.

I'm stealing this from Joe, so don't hate me, Joe. Each level, you go down, you ask how. Right? So if we want to do this, okay, how are we going to do that with these initiatives? How are we gonna track the success of those initiatives with these metrics? How are we gonna move those metrics? With these tactics and so on?

And conversely, if you're starting at the bottom, so with those teams and individuals and move yourself up, you wanna ask the question of why? So, all right, I'm responsible for the strategy. Why? Okay, well it's to move this metric forward. Why is that important? It's because we want to move this initiative in the right direction.

Why is that important? Because we wanna progress the vision of our focus area in this certain department or this region. Using that, how and why structure can really. Transform not just how you think about your plan, but also uncover which of your teams and individuals may be misaligned. Because there's, there could be a gap there, right?

You'll say, why am I doing this? Okay, well that doesn't make sense. That doesn't actually accomplish that. Or, how am I doing this? Oh, there's nothing there. I don't know how I'm doing it. And you can really [00:30:00] get to the crux of that.

Joe Krause: Yeah,

Jonathan Morgan: Hopefully I didn't, uh, butcher your, your story there,

Joe Krause: No, no, it's all good. No, I mean, it helps 'cause I mean, ultimately strategic plans are sometimes over complicated. We're just basically saying, what are we gonna focus our time and attention above and beyond the day-to-day? 'cause the day-to-day is what takes up most of our time.

Strategic vision is all about what we do on the edges, right? How, how can we move the organization to a new place? But. You know, that's why we have to be choosy what goes into the plan, because the plan's too big. You're really never gonna have a chance to get it done. So having these types of conversations, like how and why and doing surveys hopefully allow, allows you to trim the plan down.

Into three or four key things you're focused on. And if you do that consistently over the course of the, let's call it three to five year planning horizon, you might end up in a place where you want it to be all along, where you're doing, uh, you launched a new business line, or you have a new department or a new service that you're offering.

Whatever that looks like, it takes consistency, which is the word we keep using, and it takes a vision to say, we are going here. There, there's no other way to go. If you're on the bus, please be here. If not, [00:31:00] you know, there's other ways to engage, but ultimately we're going here. Get on the bus, let's do this thing.

And, um, there's no better feeling. That's the thing too. We don't focus on the feeling that after five years imagine your entire business has now changed and now you're. And a place where you're doing some really interesting things, serving the community, helping patients, whatever that looks like, because of that perseverance that you had over those years through your leadership, there's no better feeling.

So just keep in mind that that feeling is worth all of this. Um, all this, uh, conversation that Jonathan and I are talking about, it is worth it because the alternative is being mediocre. At, at best. And at worst, it could be, it could really threaten the livelihood of your organization long term. We don't want that for any of you.

Um, so staying fresh, innovating, executing your plan is a business imperative. It is not a nice to have. And as leaders, you owe it to yourself. If you're gonna do it, do it full. Uh, do it with your full heart versus, uh, doing it half, uh, halfway.

Jonathan Morgan: Love it. So that really wraps up most of the topics around alignment to leadership, at least, that we can concisely go through in about 30 minutes. [00:32:00] Joe, we'll have future conversations on the other five, right? Collaboration, accountability, progress tracking, continuous improvement, and data and technology.

Before we close out, anything else you think is super important in alignment and leadership that we might have missed today?

Joe Krause: No, I think ultimately the, the stats that are in the, um, state of strategy execution report are worth listening to, or reading, I should say, and listening to our last podcast. So for those that maybe have glanced at the report, um, I would take an opportunity, especially now that you know, we're gonna do a variety of these episodes.

Really take in all the information that's in there. We are very choosy with what made it in 'cause it's very actionable things there. And I think you'll find at least in each section, one or two things that you can apply today to be better at execution. So I look forward to future conversations about this.

Please have this guide handy, take a look at it. And uh, Jonathan and I look forward to having, uh, future deep dives on the various topics because it will do nothing but help you and the organization, and most importantly, the people that you serve.

Jonathan Morgan: All [00:33:00] righty. Well Joe, thanks for joining me. We'll have another conversation here soon and uh, thanks for listening everybody.

Joe Krause: Thanks everyone.