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Consider the case of a fast growing private sector bank, plagued with an epithet of ‘Aggressive Sales, Regressive Service’ .The email of a senior manager outlines the focus for the year “Our aim is to have zero unhappy customers!”
Ask a branch manager about that and she will grin wryly & say ‘It’s a new mantra… a flavour of the season….like six sigma”
A bank teller asks exasperatedly “What am I supposed to do when the customer is shouting on my throat. Should I keep smiling, keep him happy …. take up the onus of solving the problem when the call centre had clearly messed up”
“If you look at data, 70% of the issues are caused by customer’s ignorance about the process or the product. Only 30% on account of bank induced errors. So actually customers have no reason to be so unhappy!” says a regional quality champion, after doing an in-depth analysis.
The more employees you talk to, the clearer it becomes that not only there are a number of tracks, but also a number of destinations. And suddenly the organization looks more like a multiple headed hydra, a complex puzzle.
We could unfold the mystery of how the organization still conspires to reach somewhere OR look at a simple word ‘Alignment’.
Alignment: neat, clean & purposeful.
Like a single track, a single train & a single destination.
Alignment does not happen by default
A lot of senior management time is spent in formulation the strategy. Senior managers huddle into workshops and debate the destiny/mission of the company. The workshops are followed by a phase when the missionary zeal takes over and you find vision/mission statements, engraved in gold letters, up on company walls.
Employees look blankly at these ‘gold lettered mantras’. Some dismiss them as vestiges of an annual ‘Strategy Festival’ for senior management-much sound & fury signifying nothing.
Others try and take part in the festivities. They try to understand what the ‘Strategy Festival’ has in store for them. But even if he tried, what could a factory supervisor do to “leverage technology & relationships to create a competitive advantage” or a counter salesman do about “being the preferred brand of choice for Gen Y consumers”
What are the top three things that the purchase manager should do to ‘leverage technology and relationship’?
How can a training manager measure whether training programme meant for the distributors is ‘building bonds’?
What would change in the ‘Day in the Life of’ an institutional salesman if the office equipment company has decided to diversify into construction?
Most employees are not part of strategy formulation. They have simple questions.
What is the need for a new strategy/vision? What changes, what does not?
Does it address the challenges/problems that the company was confronted with?
How does it affect my life?
How would I know whether I am on the right path?
How will it affect my appraisal?
How will it affect my boss, my colleagues, and other departments?
Most of these questions remain unanswered or better still, employees develop their own answers based on assumptions, hearsay and scattered bits of information.
And this widens the gulf between strategy formulation & strategy execution.
Alignment has to be built like a bridge, connecting the world of theory & the world of execution.
It is a necessary bridge to build. The bridge may not be sufficient to ensure that the strategy gets executed well. But without this bridge, strategy will never cross over to the world of execution.
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