We discussed what it takes to collaborate well, and what happens to information as it cascades through an organisation. His growth plan for the year ahead is ambitious, and none of it comes together unless his team is pulling in the same direction.
So I suggested something simple for his next leadership meeting. Ask everyone to write down their department’s top three priorities, without any context or discussion beforehand. Then go round the room and have each person read theirs out loud.
The results surprised him. Not one priority matched, word for word. His team were all working on the same things, but they all had their own way of describing it.
If your leadership team isn’t using the same language to describe the business priorities, think about what’s being passed down to everyone else in the business. Inconsistent language from the top creates confusion further down, and confusion tends to create stress.
It can be uncomfortable for a leadership team to realise they’ve been agreeing to different things without knowing it. This is a structural issue rather than a people problem and so it’s entirely fixable. Fixing it is often what shifts a team from being busy to working hard towards the same outcome.
Try it yourself at your next leadership meeting. If the answers don’t line up, that’s worth a conversation, whether that’s with me or within your own team first.
If you’d like some help getting everyone talking about the same priorities, in the same language, over the next three, six or twelve months, that’s exactly the sort of thing I do. You can find out more about our Strategy Alignment Workshop.
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