Truth 17
What's the Big Idea? Bring Your Guiding Rules into Everyday Organizational Life
Our word strategy comes from the Greek strategos, meaning military general. This suggests that strategy is something that takes place at a high level. Although that may traditionally have been the case, in recent years the military, along with other organizations, has increasingly placed emphasis on empowering people at all levels. They take ownership of the organization's core values and strategy—its "big ideas"—and make decisions based on these daily.
If you want your staff to live by your organization's "big ideas," you must empower them to do so. You do this by communicating those ideas clearly. You also work out with them the practical ways in which they can live out those ideas every day so that they are fully part of your and their work. Don't just hand your employees a piece of paper to guide them; your core strategies need to be embedded within their consciousness.
It's one thing to have a sense yourself of where you want the organization to go; it's another to put those ideas into a form that others can share and identify with. You need to express two principles in clear, simple language that others can refer to in the course of their daily work. These are how you run this business—the guiding principles or rules of engagement that everyone needs to follow—and where you want the organization to go. For example, do you want your organization to have a higher profile in its market, to increase its customer base, or to increase profits by cutting expenses?
Don't just hand your
employees a piece of
paper to guide them;
your core strategies
need to be embedded
within their
consciousness.
What kind of day-to-day tactics can you use to accomplish these overall strategies? Let's look at an example of how the leader of one unusual organization—the Atlanta Braves—approached the challenge of being guided by its big ideas every day. The team's overall strategy is to develop and nurture a culture of winning. That's a bit like the goal of increasing shareholder value or making an organizational profitable. It's a wonderful end point to strive for.
The Braves' general manager established three big ideas to guide day-to-day decisions. Everything the team has done in 15 years of winning has been shaped by these ideas.
Big Idea 1: Everyone Needs to Be an "A" Player
Strategy: Move players in constantly and develop them; cull those who have lost the winning spark.
Everyday tactics:
- Hire talent scouts to find the right players, construct and run player-development programs, and look at prospective players' abilities through tests and profiles.
- Establish and hone athletic and mental skills needed, such as game toughness, confronting challenges, adaptability, and coachability.
Big Idea 2: Communicate with People About How They Are Doing
Strategy: Always show them respect, gratitude, and trust in their work.
Everyday tactics:
- Communicate to the team that they are good and that they will produce.
- Use your leadership confidence to bolster the team's confidence.
Big Idea 3: Use Real-World Evidence for Real-Time Feedback
Strategy: Use tangible, countable and visible evidence so that your players can clearly see what's happening.
Everyday tactic:
- Use statistics to decide which players to bring in, to consistently adjust people's judgment and leverage their development, and to help everyone adapt to changes in their tactics in real time.
Work with your team to find the right big ideas for your organization by using the Atlanta Braves' work as a jumping-off point. Although they've never paid for a number-one draft choice, they consistently bring along their players through development and move out players who have peaked. Can you match that?