Is your meticulously crafted strategy falling flat during execution? Discover a powerful approach to making your strategic vision a lived reality.
This blog post is a summary of our webinar What is Strategy Activation? Watch the on-demand version now.
For anyone responsible for leading change transformation in their organization, an effective strategy activation approach is critical to bringing a strategy to life. Too often, strategies are meticulously planned but falter during execution, leaving teams disengaged and goals unmet. Bridging this gap requires more than traditional change management—it demands a robust strategy activation approach.
In our 30+ years of helping clients with their change efforts, we’ve learned it’s crucial for leaders to focus on three critical factors to develop an effective activation approach:
- Creating Line of Sight: Employees need to clearly understand how their roles support the organization’s strategic vision. A well-articulated strategy that links individual roles and their contribution to the broader mission is essential. Leaders must consistently reinforce this connection, ensuring employees see their contributions as vital to achieving organizational goals.
- Driving Engagement: Engaging employees early in the process fosters ownership and reduces resistance to change. Authentically involving them in the strategy-making process can turn them into advocates rather than passive recipients of change. We recommend designing experiences and opportunities for employees to engage directly with the strategy. Doing so will provide change leaders with early feedback. It will also help identify potential pitfalls and solutions to build up employees’ confidence in the vision and spur their investment in executing the strategy.
- Investing in Activation: Allocating resources for communication, training, and continuous support ensures that your strategy doesn’t just remain a high-level plan. Strategy activation must be seen as an ongoing journey that empowers people to adopt new behaviors. Leaders must cultivate a culture of continuous learning and adaptability, providing teams with the tools and resources needed to succeed.
At the core of any strategy activation effort is the activation curve—a powerful framework to help leaders shape the rollout of a new change initiative; it is designed to bridge the reality of how people learn. The activation curve starts at the awareness stage (Hear It) and progresses toward building greater understanding and acceptance of new concepts through hands-on experiences (Believe It), and culminates in embedding new behaviors, mindsets, and habits into daily practice in the final stage (Live It).
Moving employees through the activation curve ensures that the change isn’t just understood but embedded into the organization. It’s also a valuable guide to help diagnose your organization’s starting point for change.
By prioritizing these steps, you can lead your teams through successful change transformations, ensuring your strategic vision becomes a reality for your organization.
Remember, investing in people as the drivers of change is key to lasting success. With the right focus and tools, you can bridge the gap between strategy and execution, driving measurable impact in your organization.
If you’d like to learn more about how to create clarity, drive engagement, and sustain momentum during change initiatives, watch our on-demand webinar, or check out our Strategy Activation course.