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The Big Questions #5 - Raven Strategic

The Big Questions #5

Is the best strategic thinker in your business even being invited into the boardroom?

By Daryl Raven

Before we start.. there are a few more questions to honestly kick this off:

  • Was your current business strategy created by only senior executives?
  • Is your leadership team ‘similar’ in how they think?
  • Do all people within your business feel like they can voice their thoughts for the future? Have you given them the chance to?
  • Are your employees invested in your strategy? Do they believe in it? Do they understand it? Do they think you’re completely off track to the point they’ve given up and they’re just coming into work to eat their lunch hand collect their pay check?

These questions may seem harsh, but often the likelihood is that upon reflection many business leaders will relate to the above points in some degree – chances are they just don’t want to believe it.. or know what to do about it.

The first thing those leaders need to acknowledge is that the best strategic-thinking in a business is not limited to the top echelons of management, nor limited by status or salary band, nor by longevity of tenure.

“The leaders of businesses who are guilty of pumping out ‘top down plans’ need to open their minds to a far wider range of inputs, and voices”

Businesses whose leaders ‘push-down’ strategy to simply be ‘delivered’ by staff – with little regard for engagement, feedback, innovative thinking, or new ideas – are far less likely to be successful. 

In truth the most successful modern businesses have managed to carefully, and thoroughly, link strategic planning and operational execution by engaging staff at all levels of their business into a succinct, consistent, two-way strategy process.
The leaders of businesses who are guilty of pumping out ‘top down plans’ need to open their minds to a far wider range of inputs, and voices to ensure they’re not jeopardising the future of their business through apathy, outdated thinking, or a sense of ‘status-equals-strategy’. 

The easiest way to break down any historic walls that have held back business-wide strategic thinking, and the ‘strategic listening’ required of leadership – is to meaningfully introduce a motivational communications plan, and observable management actions that promote, and reward, the rise of strategic thinking at all levels of the business.

Fostering and rewarding widespread strategic thinking does not mean that every person in your business is expected to become a brilliant strategic contributor and sit around your boardroom table – but it will highlight those people, the ideas, and the questions which cannot be denied a place in your strategic conversation any longer!

For more insights into strategic planning techniques you can use that will meaningfully enhance your business; contact us today.

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