9 Comments
Sep 20Liked by Svyatoslav Biryulin

I've talked to some big names in the content creation space. One said, in particular, he used to work for a marketing agency. His bosses had no idea what they were doing.

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That's quite normal on the corporate world. I used to be a CEO, so I know what I am talking about. I believe some of my subordinates also didn't know what our strategy was...

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Sep 17Liked by Svyatoslav Biryulin

People are so busy running on a hamster wheel and getting others to join in without thinking about why or to what end.

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Unfortunately, you are right.

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Sep 23Liked by Svyatoslav Biryulin

"If it takes you more than 5 minutes to explain the Central Principles of your strategy to a complete stranger, you should work on it again" - excellent advice, as is "Remind your team of the Central Principles at every opportunity" - talking about - and living - the organisation's strategy is how it becomes real.

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Sep 23·edited Sep 23Author

Thanks for the comment, David. This is a hard lesson I learned when I was CEO. My company made a strategic pivot, we switched from low prices to the speed of delivery. And I had to remind my executives in any meeting: "Fast delivery is our top priority!" And it worked.

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So true it made me laugh. When I was in corporate, I managed the performance appraisals and as we all know, individual goals should trickle down from department and company goals. This was news to most people as they'd never seen the strategy.

We did have a detailed strategy with quarterly tasks for each department, but most people didn't know it existed. Some managers refused to share it; some didn't see why they should.

One CEO forbade the senior team to share it.

I also managed employee engagement and one year (hurrah) we had an outcome that the senior team would give a presentation on the strategy and progress each month. And there is stopped. Although the managers in the audience were meant to pass information this down to their supervisors and teams, they rarely did.

Better stop now before I go into rant mode!

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Many thanks for the comment, Wendy! If your staffers don't know your strategy, you have to give them clear instructions for every single task. They can't make their own decisions because they don't understand priorities. And since giving a clear instruction for every move is impossible, everything falls apart.

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The "missing middle" of management is where all strategy disappears from the C-Suite down...

... and where insights from customers and teams die before they can make their way up and give executive leadership important feedback on the success of their strategy.

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