Strategy communications
In our view all communications that help people to understand an organization’s direction and consequently to change their way of working is strategy communications.
Corporate story
A clear and inspiring story truly relating to employees is elementary to strategy communications. Often called corporate story and mostly including core and brand values, it explains an organization’s origins, external context, mission and how employees can help achieving it. Stories relating to the strategy may already exist, but more often the story development process is a good way for (top) managers to develop a shared view and for policy makers to re-assess their policy. Being involved helps them to take up their role in achieving the strategy. A corporate story can be created by powerfull words as well as images in order to help employees understand the considerations and motives for the coursre taken and to stimulate them to playing an active role in translating the strategy to what it means for them, or further fleshing it out as well as execution.
Explicit and implicit communications
A strategy is communicated explicitly in road shows, interviews, presentations and other targeted and mutually enhancing activities. These offer opportunities to clearly explain how a project or theme fits within the strategy or contributes to achieving it, thus helping people to understand what is going on. For explicit communications to work well, close coordination and clear alignment of internal messaging is key.
Implicit communication, however, has an even greater impact. Especially management behavior, the way employees are assessed against KPIs and working conditions. If, for instance, service to customers is explicitly stressed, but employees in a call center are assessed against the number of calls they make and cannot call customers back themselves, this implicitly tells them a different story.
Involve can help in developing an inspiring strategy story as well as bringing it to life in an organization. Strategy communication often entails behavioral change. In that case, change management is helpful.
