Everyone is busy. But where is the outcome?
It is common place today to see professionals in every organizations working hard like never before. A typical day is full of action — meetings, reviews, travel, analysis, fire fighting and so on. It is also not rare to see war cries and corporate objectives for the year displayed in every corner of the office. Yet, many of the organizations fail to get their employees “really” attest to the war cry and corporate objectives. Why is that so? Are leaders unable to articulate themselves? Are employees not keen?
The answer may be in the way the such war cries and objectives are put forth. Remember the narrative is very important — whether it is a movie or a corporate success story. The employees have to see their work and contribution in the success equation of the company, which sadly does not happen. On the contrary, they feel distanced and do not get involved in the whole execution process. The gate-keepers, the skeptics and the resisters continue to seed doubts into others. The simple fact that their suggestions and issues are never taken into account creates the unnecessary confusion that persists throughout the year.
It so happens that every organization is sailing on a journey into the unknown and into newer realms of business success. In this journey, every step forward means “an inevitable change”. The disillusionment amongst employees is primarily because of this change. They heartily resist the change and unfortunately, there are no motivators around to change the mindset. A sad result is the lack of forward movement.
According to Gallup research, just 15% of U.S. employees “strongly agree” that their organization’s leadership makes them enthusiastic about the future.
There is a clear need for “frequent strategic messaging” by leaders multiple times in a year so that the “value of change” is visualized by the employees.
For more than 50 years, Intel and AMD have been competitors. Intel always staying ahead of AMD and all that changes after AMD launched the blockbuster Ryzen processors in 2017. Considering that both Intel and AMD have had the same pedigree, we can imagine how competition would have been every single year and evolved in the last 50 years. Each one making an objective to surpass the other. Sometime back, I was told that an “Intel outside” logo usually hung in the office of AMD in Santa Clara. When the entire world were hooked on to computers which had “Intel inside” logo, here was Intel’s immediate competitor which had only one thing as its objective — to keep Intel out.
Leaders today have many options to put forth their messaging. Various formats are available — team huddles, whatsapp videos, one-to-one meetings, town halls. So many options are available today to keep driving the importance and value of change. Relying on the same format of messaging makes it a very dull commentary. Leadership is about communication through intelligent and innovative story telling.
