THE UNTAPPED POWER OF STRATEGY
How sharing your strategy with your team can supercharge your business
As a business owner, you have a clear vision of where you want your company to be, but finding the time to work on your plans can be a real challenge. The urgent always seems to take precedence over the important tasks, making it hard to focus on your long-term goals. You’ve crafted a compelling mission, vision, and values, but it feels like nobody is truly paying attention!
To make matters more complicated, your employees seem disengaged, and you’ve noticed your top talent leaving, citing a lack of communication within the company. Back when the company was smaller, you knew everyone personally, so you had a strong connection and everyone was aligned with the company goals. But as your business has grown, that personal touch seems to have been lost, and your team’s engagement is not what it used to be.
Frustration has set in as you grapple with the challenge of effectively communicating your vision and ensuring everyone is pulling together to drive the company forward.
We can help you find the solution
Here at The Pathway Communication Company, we understand the obstacles you face, and we’re here to help! By collaborating with you, we’ll transform your goals and strategies into an engaging roadmap that your employees will readily embrace. Our approach focuses on inclusive communication, ensuring your team feels connected to the company’s journey and encouraging them to contribute their valuable ideas.
By bringing your goals into the open you promote a collaborative atmosphere, where others can actively support you in accomplishing tasks that have lingered on the to-do list for far too long.
With our extensive experience in implementing and running successful strategies, we’ll demonstrate how making your strategy visible and accessible can drive significant business growth. Your dreams of taking your business where you want it to be and need it to be can become a reality.
Our tailored approach empowers you to achieve the changes you desire in your business. We’ll work closely with you through an initial workshop and over the following months we’ll help you to propel your company forward with confidence.
Let’s turn your challenges into opportunities for growth! Reach out to us today, and together, we’ll pave the way for a brighter and more successful future for your business!
How Biesse Ltd use the Pathway Strategy Map
In the summer of 2018 Steve Bulmer, CEO of Biesse UK, visited a workshop hosted and run by Jacqui Hanbury at Festo Ltd in Northampton. Here he saw how Festo used a visual strategy map, based on the four parts of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC)*, which ensured that the whole company was aware of, and was working on, the company strategy. As a similar company to Biesse UK (both are sales subsidiaries of European companies), Steve saw how this could help him with employee engagement and communication and immediately arranged for the whole of his leadership team to come and have a look for themselves. Although some of the team were sceptical Steve’s enthusiasm and Jacqui’s experience meant a workshop was arranged and the process started to enable Biesse to have a virtual strategy map of their own.
Creation of the Strategy Map
Biesse already had a strategy – 20 or so items on a page – only visible to the Senior Leadership Team (SLT). What they didn’t do was share the strategy with the wider company of just under 100 employees. They saw the implementation of the ‘Pathway Strategy Map’ as a way to improve communication with their staff and to improve employee engagement and staff retention.
During a two day workshop in September 2018, the SLT worked with Jacqui through their goals and strategies and created their first Pathway Strategy Map. The first task was to create stretch goals in each of the Balanced Scorecard areas, and then decide on the strategies that would need to be implemented in each area to achieve these goals.
Now it was time to look at what actions were needed to achieve each strategy. These actions were not things that were done already, they were new and different actions, business as usual would not achieve these stretch goals, and change was needed. Although each action was allocated to a member of the SLT, the actual work may be carried out by another member of staff.
Once the actions were in place the complete map was created and the whole picture became clear. Wow – there were a lot of things required however, a visual map meant that the bottlenecks could be identified. As the SLT discussed these bottlenecks it became evident that the exhibitions and shows that the company did would need to be overlaid on the strategy map as these took so many employees out of the business, especially over the autumn, that fewer strategic actions could be achieved at this time. A timeline of these events was added and the due date on each strategy was adjusted to take this into account. At last, a map was emerging and it was proudly put up on the wall – a graphic image of the goals of Biesse was visible.
Getting the whole company involved is essential
A launch was planned in January for the whole company. The first step was to get buy-in from the middle management team (MMT) – this was essential as getting their comments and thoughts would enable them to help communicate with their teams. The whole company launch event went well – the SLT explained the concept in a series of workshops and gave everyone a chance to ask questions. We were under no illusions that this would now mean the strategy was accepted by everyone, but it was a great start – now we had to live it!
Keeping the map alive
Now, in 2023, the Biesse Strategy Map is alive and kicking. It is reviewed each month in the SLT Meeting with each card being individually discussed as it becomes due for sign-off. This is invaluable as ensures that the whole SLT is aware of what is happening within the company – and no card is signed off without all the SLT agreeing. All signed-off cards are then updated on the map, both physical and virtual and the whole company is updated. Quarterly detailed updates to the MMT and yearly in-person updates to the whole company complete the picture.
What has been the effect?
Overall the business has used the Pathway Strategy Map concept to go through a process of continuous improvement and transformation. Change management is so much easier when it is communicated at concept level to the whole company as they not only can comment on the proposed change but also feed in their own ideas of what they need to happen. This has improved employee engagement and buy-in to what Biesse are working towards, ensuring that Biesse Ltd is an agile, forward-thinking company who are able to pivot quickly and effectively to the changes that are occurring in their industry and with their customers.
(* RS Kaplan and DP Norton,1996, The Balanced Scorecard, hbr.org)