Leadership

The art of strategic communication

How executives communicate the corporate strategy to all employees in an understandable way

From Sabine Walter,, Head of netzwerk managementberatung | coaching

Executives are not only responsible for developing a convincing corporate strategy, but also for communicating it successfully. How can this be achieved? In this article, I explain a multi-stage approach and provide you with specific formulation aids.

Elements of strategy communication

Successful communication of the strategy comprises five key elements:

• Explain the what and why
• Create space for questions of understanding
• Involving critics
• Repeat the central aspects of what and why like a mantra
• Communicate successes and thus convey that the company is on the right track

Let's take a look at the individual elements in detail.

Explain the what and why

In order to be able to explain to all employees what you want to achieve with the strategy and why this is important, it is essential that you work out the objectives and strategy together with your management team beforehand. Only when you have clarity can you communicate the strategy.

Your dialogue jokers for target group-oriented communication

There is an iron rule of convincing communication: The worm must taste the fish, not the fisherman. What does this mean for strategy communication?

The ability to respond to the prior knowledge and questions of the respective employee groups is crucial for understanding the strategy throughout the organisation. Managers categorise things differently to production employees. To ensure that all employees understand the strategy and its business benefits, pay attention to the following:

• Clarify in advance: What is known to the various employee groups? What do you need to explain?
• Avoid complex terms and abstract concepts.
• Use analogies and media such as PowerPoint or videos to visually support your speech.
• Prepare written material in the respective national languages of the locations and use simultaneous interpreters for town hall meetings or staff meetings if necessary.
• Provide concrete examples from the day-to-day work of the various employees to illustrate the facts. Which of the familiar and proven aspects will remain? What will change?

Especially if the strategy implies major changes, it is important that you as the managing director explain the underlying considerations. In doing so, you will foster understanding of the strategy as well as trust and acceptance for its implementation.

Creating space for questions of understanding

In order to find out directly during communication how comprehensible what was said was for your employees, create space for comprehension questions. In a town hall meeting, it is a good idea to ask an experienced moderator to lead the discussion.

Maintain an approachable attitude during this discussion. Repeat your key messages several times so that employees internalise them.

Note: In our media-driven and information-flooded times, messages need to be repeated up to 54 times in order to reach our consciousness.

Involving critics

Critics are a gift. They signal two things to you:

1. You have not yet been 100% convincing in your communication.
2. Critics want to be involved.

They use criticism to make themselves heard and be seen. Meet this need by inviting the critics to a small group discussion and lead each criticism to a solution with effective questions. Below you will find some examples of this:

Repeat the central aspects of what and why like a mantra

As mentioned earlier, a message needs up to 54 repetitions to really reach the recipient. It is therefore crucial that you keep repeating the central elements of your strategy on different communication channels and at different times.

I will explain how this can be achieved using an example.

Communicate successes and thus convey that the company is on the right track

Experience has shown that you will start implementing the strategy at the same time as communicating it. It is important that you emphasise successes achieved in very small steps.

• What have you already achieved?
• Where is the first progress being made?
• What has already been achieved in individual teams?

In German companies in particular, we see that successes are taken far too much for granted and too rarely celebrated.

Recognising progress helps employees to understand: "We are on the right track.". This provides security and helps to ensure that your strategy is accepted in the long term.

How can the strategy be integrated more strongly into the everyday lives of employees and managers?

In many companies that we support in their strategic realignment, we see too little communication between strategy and operations. However, the operational business should be the strategy so that everything you and your teams do on a daily basis contributes to what you want to achieve as a company.

That's why I'd like to give you a few ideas below on how you can achieve even better interlinking:

Conclusion

The comprehensible communication of the corporate strategy is a continuous and multi-layered process

As you can see, it is not enough to present the corporate strategy to all employees and managers once as part of an event. Rather, successful communication of the corporate strategy is a continuous and multi-layered process. This becomes easier if you involve employees and managers in the development and communication of the strategy. This involvement not only contributes to an understanding of the strategy, it also ensures much greater identification with it and, ultimately, its operational implementation.