Blog
Your number one audience for your strategy is those whose responsibility it is to take on the change needed to achieve your organization’s desired future. Buzzwords are their enemy because this fuzzy language leaves employees guessing at the real meaning of the words and the leaders’ expectations. Corporate jargon inflicts huge damage on a leader’s ability to communicate, prioritize, and measure the strategy.
Crisis of any kind can put us into a state of paralysis. It can feel like the corporate strategy we spent months on and the meticulous project planning that followed needs to be tossed out – baby and bath water. And you are likely right. Why? Because the future is and always has been uncertain, and no amount of strategic planning will change that.
Managing through COVID means doing things differently, and that is just what my client, a tourism marketing organization (TMO) that has been putting PuMP® into practice since 2015, did when they needed feedback and buy-in on prioritized potential measures.
Being crystal clear on your Why matters more than ever
Uncertainty demands that leaders improve how they lead with Why because the How is often not immediately evident. During periods of rapid change, we need to do things differently, and we know that “different” is a harder, riskier decision than doing the “same” better.
When it comes to strategic planning, most executives would never think of embarking on a new plan without a framework to follow; yet, when it comes to performance measures (also …
I have never met a leader who doesn’t believe that their teams should be accountable for achieving their goals. Yet, when asked who owns the performance measures associated with the goals, there is often a troubling silence.
Many of our colleagues and managers feel cynical about performance measurement because of their past experiences and current struggles. So we often need to reinvigorate their support before we can get the training, the systems and the resources required for developing more meaningful performance measurement.
Often it is hard to see what is most important, to understand what the real meaning is, and to know what the organization is trying to achieve.
Do you struggle to know where strategy ends and execution begins? Does your strategy get caught up in a whirlwind of activity, without being quite sure what has been achieved? You are not alone. If you want to do something differently this year, read on.
Most organizations have weak corporate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). They rarely align to strategy, give evidence of impact, or offer actionable feedback. If they can’t do these things, they can’t really be called “corporate” KPIs.
Ask leaders if performance measurement is critical to their organization and most of them will clearly answer “yes”.
But rarely do they question what their organization’s motivation, processes, or ROI were when they started creating the key performance indicators (KPIs).
Clients and PuMP® Blueprint workshop participants often ask “who should be on our strategic planning team? Measures team? Objectives team?
We often feel confident that if we find the perfect mix of individual traits and skills necessary, we’ll have a stellar PuMP® Measures team – take a stats whiz, someone who loves data, the manager of the goal, a couple extroverts, someone with an MBA and Dream Team assembled, right?