If you’re seeing a change on the horizon that will impact your business, you’re likely preparing a strategy. You know it needs to result in a competitive advantage in the coming new context. The alternative could be loss of market share, loss of talent or, worse, irrelevance. So how do you make sure your strategy has liftoff—and soon?
First, let’s talk about liftoff. Liftoff is when people across your organization start to intentionally support the strategy. They make different day-to-day decisions and practice different behaviors than they would have yesterday. What they would have said no to yesterday, they’re saying yes to today—and vice-versa. They’re holding the right meetings and inviting the right people. They’re changing their expectations of their teams and peers.
As you’ve likely experienced, it can take a long time to get liftoff. It can take status check meetings, Gannt charts, accountability meetings, a communications plan, and so on. Leaders have come to accept that giving strategy liftoff just takes time.
We see it differently.
The reason it can take so long to get liftoff is what drives the decisions people make every day; their underlying assumptions. Gannt charts and communications plans can’t change underlying assumptions. Changing assumptions happens one of two ways. One way is that people see their assumptions fail them enough times in the new context. This, of course, takes time and is a pretty passive approach. The other way is more proactive. In this approach, teams collaborate to identify their current assumptions, then decide together which will serve the strategy and which will hinder it.
Identifying assumptions is not a grueling process. Facilitated well and with the right people in the room, it can be done in one day. By simply recognizing their taken-for-granted assumptions, it becomes easier for your people to name the decisions they would have made yesterday that won’t work today. It becomes easier for them to name the behaviors they need to expect each other to stop or start to make the strategy work. Accountability becomes a natural part of the strategy shift instead of an additional leadership effort.
Following this approach, you’ll walk away with clear expectations about the decisions and behaviors that will drive your strategy. You’ll recognize the assumptions that will help your strategy so you can elevate them, and the assumptions that will hinder your strategy so you can support each other in changing them.
In short, you’ll have liftoff.
If you could use help giving your strategy liftoff, reach out. We’re here to help.