MOST Analysis

Mission Statement

This module is our communications module. Here the team will lean the art of pre-mission briefing, communicating the plan to their teammates. Outcome: the ability to tell the story of how we’ll achieve success. Desired Learning Objectives: We understand the tenets of communicating for effect. We understand the basic components of the “BRIEF” methodology. We know how to use BRIEF to effectively communicate a plan.

BRIEF stands for:

• B: Briefly provide an overview of the mission, objectives and plan outline, from end state to how we’ll achieve it

• R: Review the “behavioral focus of the day,” as well as any individual highlights that deserve a focus

• I: Inspire the team by highlighting who is going to do what by when

• E: Effectively communicate potential challenges to our success, as well as how we’ll identify and address those challenges

• F: Finish on a high note by verifying comprehension, addressing questions, and explaining why you’re confident in the team’s ability to win!

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Objectives

01. Framework: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Create Urgency: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Communicate The ‘Why’: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Storytelling: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Insights: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Ambassadors: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. Communication Obstacles: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. 1 Month
08. Media: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Celebrate Successes: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month

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Strategies

01. Framework: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Create Urgency: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Communicate The ‘Why’: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Storytelling: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Insights: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. Ambassadors: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
07. Communication Obstacles: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
08. Media: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
09. Celebrate Successes: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.

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Tasks

01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Framework.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Create Urgency.
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Communicate The ‘Why’.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Storytelling.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Insights.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Ambassadors.
07. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Communication Obstacles.
08. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Media.
09. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Celebrate Successes.
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Introduction

Getting Your Business On Board With Strategic Planning Using Communication

Will your strategic plan have any effect if no one knows about it? The prognosis, in our opinion, is not promising. This is due to the fact that a plan is only as effective as its execution.

In other words, if you want to be successful, you must learn not only how to develop a strategic plan for your company, but also how to successfully communicate that plan.

It’s much easier said than done.

Use the following suggestions to improve strategic plan communication and gain employee buy-in from the bottom up.

Why Is It Critical To Convey Your Strategic Vision Effectively?

Companies spend a significant amount of time developing a strategic plan or vision for their company. All of your time and resources, however, will be wasted if you are unable to effectively communicate your vision to the rest of the company.

Not only is the initial investment wasted, but if you can’t strategically align your business, you’re basically leaving every team to guess what work is critical, which problems or goals to prioritize, and what their ultimate purpose is.

Misalignment between departments and across the company is a sure recipe for misalignment in strategy.

This misalignment can lead to confusion and inefficiency, rivalry between teams and divisions, and employee burnout and disengagement.

In other words, the company cannot move forward effectively or efficiently without a well-communicated strategic plan.

How to Deliver a Strategic Plan

Use the following tips and best practices to successfully communicate your strategic plan and get everyone on the same page.

Organize An All-Hands Meeting.

First, make your vision known at an all-hands meeting for the entire company. Ideally, you will communicate your plans several times over the next few months through different meetings and formats. However, it is critical to first communicate your plans to the complete organization so that everyone receives the same messaging.

Informing everyone at the same time will help to prevent misunderstanding or misinformation from spreading through the rumor mill and ensure that no one is left out.

It also allows you to respond questions and receive preliminary feedback from the group. Make time during your meeting to answer questions and solicit input. Addressing those concerns together can relieve managers of the burden of answering difficult questions and ensures that everyone receives the same answers from the same trustworthy source.

Then, as you continue to roll out communication and implementation across departments, you can build on the initial feedback and handle more detailed questions case by case and team by team.

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Explain your “why.”

Don’t forget to describe why things are changing as you explain what is changing. Change is difficult. When you introduce a new strategic plan, you are likely to disrupt your workers’ work processes and approaches.

Assume your new strategy involves technological updates or the implementation of new systems. While you may be able to see how those changes will make your employees’ jobs easier or more efficient in the long run, they will have to bear the brunt of learning a new system, changing well-worn processes that “worked just fine” before, and dealing with the growing pains of a learning curve—which may include lower productivity and even upset customers at first.

Respect your employees by recognizing what you’re truly asking them to do and explaining why it’s critical to move forward with the new plan.

Make two points as you explain the “why” behind these changes:

1. Create a sense of urgency

Why make a shift now? What’s the hurry? You must create urgency for why these changes are happening now as you describe the purpose behind the new plans. What motivates the need for change?

This will help people comprehend why you’re making the changes and will instill in them the same sense of urgency in carrying out your plans effectively.

2. Explain what’s in it for “me.”

High-level strategy can appear disconnected from the day-to-day work or processes that teams and individuals perform. When communicating your future goals and vision, make sure to connect the purpose and benefits directly to your employees.

How will the new plan improve their working environment? What are the advantages for their group or department? For instance, if the new strategic vision will result in happier customers, describe how this will convert into easier customer service calls or higher sales quotas.

When people believe that change will benefit them (rather than just a vague bottom line), they will be more invested in making those plans a success.

Create A Framework For Teams To Follow In Order To Align Their Work With The Company’s Plan.

Create a company-wide structure for implementing the new strategy and keeping everyone’s work aligned to take the guesswork out of alignment. Creating objectives and projects based on the strategic plan is a simple but effective approach.

OKRs assist you in organizing your goals around a strategy and tracking key results at the conclusion of the measurement period. This process not only helps teams and individuals align their objectives and goals, but it also clarifies ownership and accountability.

When everyone is working from the same framework, it is simpler to execute company strategy broadly and consistently, ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

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In Future Interactions, Reinforce The Strategic Plan.

Maintain the momentum behind your new strategy plans by following up and following through. Too often, leaders make the error of launching a new strategy without ensuring consistent communication throughout the rest of the year and beyond.

Remember that communicating your strategy plan should not be a one-time event.

It requires time to build adoption and align your company with a new vision or goal. Make your strategy a part of your company meetings, newsletter, employee reviews, and one-on-one talks to reinforce your message.

Celebrate Your Accomplishments Along The Road.

Implementing a new strategy plan is not as easy as crossing items off a to-do list. There will be questions to answer, issues to resolve, and individuals to persuade. This requires time and will not always be easy. That is why it is critical to recognize and reward individual, team, and organizational accomplishments along the road.

In team and business meetings, highlight these individual and collective victories. Recognizing successes as your business transitions to a new strategy will increase engagement and adoption, leading to greater ownership and responsibility across the board.

Visuals Can Help You Clarify Your Point.

Strategic plans typically include a plethora of terms, forecasts, and components. However, if you don’t communicate clearly, these details can rapidly become lost in translation. By visualizing crucial information, you can keep your audience engaged and on board.

Visuals are a simple but effective way to supplement your presentation and clarify your messaging so that everyone knows your future vision. To clarify new processes, responsibilities, and accountability, use visuals such as flowcharts, graphs, product roadmaps, and organizational models.

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Use visuals to improve alignment within and across teams as teams begin to execute the new strategy.

Simple collaboration features allow team members to provide feedback or clarify concerns about group projects.

Visual collaboration and communication from the top down and within teams will assist your business in understanding and implementing your new vision more quickly and effectively.

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Many organizations overlook one thing when implementing a Balanced Scorecard or any type of strategic plan: no matter how effective your strategy is, it won’t work if your employees don’t know how to align with it, or worse, if they don’t know about it. As a result, your internal communication strategy can genuinely make or break your efforts.

Given the importance of communication in strategic success, you may find it useful to create a communication plan to ensure information is effectively disseminated at all levels. In this section, we’ll explain the objectives and key components of a strong strategic communication plan, as well as how you can surmount some of the most common obstacles you’ll face as you work to get everyone on the same page.

What Precisely Is A Strategy Communication Plan?

A strategic communication plan is a written plan that outlines how your organization’s goals will be communicated to your team. This plan is deliberate, with messages and tactics used to help connect employees with your strategy and drive your organization’s performance success.

Objectives in Common

Consider your rationale for making a plan before you begin. What is your marketing strategy’s overarching goal? Is it intended to:

• Raise knowledge of the Balanced Scorecard or strategic plan throughout the organization?
• Educate all audiences on important Balanced Scorecard concepts?
• Increase the project’s important stakeholders’ engagement and commitment?
• Encourage process participation?
• Raise awareness of the Balanced Scorecard and strategy plan?
• Ensure that team outcomes are quickly and effectively disseminated?

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Case Study: Nova Scotia Power’s Communication Objective

“To present the concepts of the Balanced Scorecard to the key constituents involved in both sponsoring and providing input to the implementation, and to provide all involved with regular updates regarding the team’s progress during the implementation.”

This goal specifies who should receive communication and what the content should say, both of which will serve as guidelines for all future strategy-related communications.

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Important Elements of Your Communication Plan

Determine the essential elements of your communication plan: who, why, what, when, and where.

Who refers to both the communicator and the intended audience. You should define the right groups to be involved in the process based on the scope of your implementation. Your intended audience is made up of these groups. Following the identification of the target audience, each group should be assigned a communicator tasked with successfully disseminating the message.

The why and what in this equation represent the goal or message. The goal of the communication strategy is to communicate the original goal of implementing the plan. This could take the shape of a common goal, such as “generate key stakeholders’ engagement and commitment to the project.” What are we doing and why are we doing it? We are putting the communication strategy into action in order to generate engagement and commitment from important stakeholders.

When should you deliver the message? The frequency of communication required will be determined by the requirements of your target audience. If you are unsure about the quantity of communication required, it is always better to overcommunicate. According to John Kotter in his essay “Leading Change,” “without credible communication, and a lot of it, employees’ hearts and minds are never captured.”

Where and how should you communicate? Effective communication often necessitates a significant quantity of effort, and the message must frequently be repeated several times. Dr. Robert Kaplan recommends communicating the plans “seven times in seven ways” to ensure that employees fully grasp the strategy and how they can contribute to success. This could include using brochures, speeches, newsletters, videos, a business website or intranet, workshops, and so on. Any medium capable of reaching the target audience could be used; it could even take the form of internal blog entries at your company.

Communication is a two-way street, so don’t neglect to solicit and provide feedback from others. Remember to communicate efficiently and frequently.

Communication Technique: Five Key Lessons

Here are a summary of lessons which you can use to avoid some of the early hiccups when developing your own strategic communications strategy.

Lesson 1: Don’t rely solely on written communication

The strategic plan should be presented in a variety of methods.

Each of your employees processes knowledge in a unique way. Therefore, if some of your workers aren’t visual learners and you only use posters to communicate your communication strategy, they won’t be impacted. Employees who regularly disregard lengthy emails won’t be impacted if you only send one email outlining the plan. As an example, make sure to present your strategic plan in a variety of methods. To ensure that each employee can learn about the plan in the manner that is most effective for them, you should use a combination of video, audio, visual, and written strategy communication.

Be imaginative in how you communicate your strategy.

For instance, “Strategy in Action: Canon Americas’ Strategy Playbook” was produced by Canon USA. This playbook was created by a graphic designer who had previously worked for USA Today and included a color-coded rendition of the company strategy map. If you want to put a special spin on your marketing strategy, think about doing something similar in your company.

Lesson 2: Make Sure That Your Content Is Clear And Pertinent

Set up your strategy vocabulary.

Consider defining it explicitly, for instance, if “customer” is one of the key words in your strategy. In other words, don’t presume that your staff is fully aware of your target audience and the purpose of your marketing efforts.

Use language that is very simple.

It might seem “smarter” or “easier” to use industry-specific acronyms, but the reverse is true. Attempt to eliminate any ineffective, jargon-filled terms like “leveraging talent” or “optimizing strategy.”

Keep two-way dialogue going, is the third lesson.

Lesson 3: Create Platforms For Bottom-Up Dialogue

Do your staff members understand that you want their feedback? They most likely don’t if you don’t have any designated spaces for this bottom-up strategy planning communication. Or, at the very least, they are unsure of how to give you that input. Based on your organizational structure, think about the best channel for constructive criticism and set it in place as soon as you can.

Lesson 4: Embrace The Vision Of The Workforce

Be receptive to advice from the staff.

Having a strategic plan is one thing, but understanding how it is affecting your workers is quite another. The leadership team will be more open to new and improved solutions to issues if they can place themselves in the position of lower-level workers and observe the strategy in action from their point of view.

Be adaptable.

After creating your strategic plan, you must be prepared to modify it as needed. Keep track of what is and isn’t functioning well, and be aware that you might need to take a step back and change your strategic plan in response to the feedback you’re receiving.

The final instruction comes from our own experience and is as follows:

Lesson 5: Making Your Progress Evident

In order to maintain audience attention and engagement, provide a steady stream of information. Even once every three months, or once every six months, is insufficient to discuss strategy. Instead, continually put it up front. To review KPIs and talk departmental strategy in relation to the organization’s overall plan, encourage departmental teams to meet once per week. Try to gather as a group once a month.

Ensure simplicity.

You can’t expect people to spend hours every week analyzing Excel spreadsheets, so the more frequently you communicate findings, the simpler your communications should be. (And you don’t want to be making them in a loop either!) Make use of a software instrument for streamlining strategies. You’ll be able to share visually appealing dashboards that provide quick access to the most crucial KPI statuses, as well as delegate the laborious task of producing reports to the software, which does so automatically and does so in accordance with a preset schedule.

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a ClearPoint plan map illustration

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With the help of all those tools, you can make strategy knowledge accessible to and transparent for everyone within your company—the basis for effective communication. You’ll achieve far more strategic success if you make it simple for your staff to obtain the information in your strategic plan and offer you helpful criticism.

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Executive Summary

BRIEF stands for:

• B: Briefly provide an overview of the mission, objectives and plan outline, from end state to how we’ll achieve it

• R: Review the “behavioral focus of the day,” as well as any individual highlights that deserve a focus

• I: Inspire the team by highlighting who is going to do what by when

• E: Effectively communicate potential challenges to our success, as well as how we’ll identify and address those challenges

• F: Finish on a high note by verifying comprehension, addressing questions, and explaining why you’re confident in the team’s ability to win!

Chapter 1: Framework

The power of a consistent approach, a framework that helps the team achieve alignment — A key element is ensuring all stakeholders are present for the BRIEF.

When cross-functional teams and individual team members work toward the same vision, they grasp their individual and team goals, and they can see how their contributions matter to the larger organizational purpose. Simply stated, team alignment is the process of reaching a common understanding.

What Does Team Harmony Entail?

It is critical that you understand how to align your team so that you can receive the benefits for your company. When people agree on what needs to be done and how it will be done, things can progress more quickly and easily. A cohesive team has its act together, with all team members working together to accomplish success. Here are some characteristics of a well-aligned squad.

• Commitment: Team members are committed to and passionate about the general success of the organization. Members are also dedicated to assisting their teammates in achieving collective achievement.
• Content is clear, consistent, and concise when teams are aligned and concentrated. Communication is effective, and the business strategy is known at all levels of the organization; team members also understand their role in accomplishing goals.

The Significance Of Team Alignment

When you want to scale, team alignment becomes even more essential. This is due to the fact that new systems and structures will be required to manage the complexity that comes with development.

Team alignment is essential to ensuring that all members comprehend the end goals and the strategies being used to achieve them. The achievement rate rises as the team becomes more aligned. Team alignment has a significant effect on your company’s overall success. According to ClearCompany, 97% of employees and executives concur that a lack of alignment has a negative impact on the outcome of a job or project. When your staff is aligned, you reap the following benefits:

• Improved collaboration and communication
• Improved communication among team members
• An increase in ingenuity
• Increased confidence among team members
• Increased efficiency
• Better efficiency
• Improved drive and morale
• Lower employee turnover rates
• The ability to make critical choices quickly
• Adaptability to a changing industry

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The Advantages of Aligning Executive Teams

In today’s uncertain business climate, executive teams are critical. They must handle more complex and time-constrained transformations than ever before, leading by example, with strong alignment, and engaging the rest of the organization around a shared purpose. Executive team alignment entails not only agreement on strategy and business priorities, but also a strong personal connection and a common understanding of the behaviors and dynamics that they wish to adopt. The executive team can take its success to the next level by increasing its commitment and accountability.

How Does The OKR Structure Aid In Team Alignment?

When considering how to align your team, don’t forget about the OKR method. The OKR framework is a powerful tool that helps people and teams align with shared company goals by driving focus and clarity. Alignment is a critical component of an OKR framework because it ensures that everyone is moving in the same direction and using the same rhythm to maximize performance effect and business success. OKRs can align executives all the way down to individual teams; in fact, many organizations use OKRs because they want different teams within the business to be more aligned with the overall company direction.

Setting OKRs has the primary goal of increasing clarity and alignment for individuals and teams, allowing them to see how their work contributes to the larger picture. When your staff can change tracks to realign with the company’s direction, they are more likely to feel engaged.

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Chapter 2: Create Urgency

Outline what the major mission elements are—to include, defining the actual mission, defining the mission objectives, and quickly explaining the plan in broad brush strokes: — Think as if you only have 2 minutes to cover all of the major elements before the fire alarm goes off and the meeting is adjourned — Create a sense of urgency by confidently explaining how the plan coming together will enable the achievement of mission success.

Why is Urgency Important?

The importance of urgency cannot be overstated because real organizational change cannot occur without the cooperation of the affected stakeholders. This is why leaders must first create a sense of urgency for required change in order to obtain management and employee cooperation.

Leaders instill a sense of urgency in organizational stakeholders by both selling the value of a future state and making the status quo a dangerous place for the stakeholders to stay. In effect, senior leaders craft a compelling narrative that explains to stakeholders why the organization’s current condition is not in their best interests.

This is frequently accomplished through candid talks about current market and competitive realities, the sharing of relevant financial and customer data, and the discussion of opportunities and crises confronting the organization. Communication is essential, and communications about the pressing need for change must be truthful. A fabricated sense of urgency will soon be exposed for what it is, dooming a change attempt to mediocrity.

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