Transformational Strategic Execution: Empowering People to Execute Strategy

Transformational Strategic Execution (TSE)

Let’s do a quick recap: TSE is a new way of thinking about, and resolving, the challenges organizations run into when operationalizing their strategic plan and vision. It is separated into four facets of transformational management.

Presenting strategy as a picture for clear communication
Building organizational commitment and readiness for change
Embracing experimentation and seeing strategy as an agile, dynamic process
Empowering people and teams to execute the strategic plan successfully

This month I want to discuss empowering people to succeed with clear alignment to vision.

Strategic Staff Empowerment

Why is empowerment so important anyway? When we give people the right to make strategic decisions, we are recognizing their expertise in their field. Firstly, this builds trust as we are clearly articulating that we accept that individual’s authority and specialist knowledge. Secondly, the delegation of decision making creates agility and we no longer have an approval lag that stretches from bottom of the organizational structure to the top, and back again. And most importantly, it allows the development of a change-oriented mindset — I believe this is critical, now more than ever, as businesses face unprecedented change.

5 Ways to Empowering People

How do we empower our people? Forbes published an insightful list of 10 attributes for empowerment, and I would like to mention five:

“Give employees generous boundaries”

Give people (through delegation) the freedom to make key decisions, and with it comes accountability. The key is to maintain strategic visibility and transparency at all time, for those making the decisions, team members, and management teams.

“Listen intently”

Recently this has become a lot harder to do, as the nature of remote working makes this somewhat more challenging. I would prefer to use the term “Monitor Intently” since, as a manager, you need the ability to track delivery, monitor outcomes, and be there when needed to clear the roadblocks — there is little value in micro-managing deliverables.

“Believe in your employees”

Give your people the opportunity to succeed: creating a clearly defined allocation of strategic delivery builds confidence and the tenacity to achieve results, now and in the future.

“Earn trust”

When any of us are given responsibility by another, we gain confidence which garners trust. If this happens top-to-bottom through an organizational structure, we will develop levels of trust, loyalty and a strong desire to deliver the absolute best for the organization.

“Give employees time”

We have all heard of SMART: make deliverable accountability Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and of course Time-bound. Framing delivery success in the context of time creates a meaningful framework for achieving results.

The StrategyBlocks Framework

The recent weeks following the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we work. We need to operate with agility now more than ever and pivot our strategy at pace. We need to use cloud-based strategic collaboration tools to help manage our businesses, enabling us to be nimble and adapt. We need to focus our people on new deliverables and monitor their progress as it rolls up the strategic hierarchy to vision. We need to ensure we are transparent and that a framework exists for true real-time strategic collaboration. As an inspirational leader you must empower your people.

Next month we will look at the last of the 4 facets of TSE, experimentation and the learning organization.