TRIBE’S TAKE
Aligning employees with the vision can be the
best kind of enabler for driving company success.
That begins with employees knowing the company
vision, but that’s only the starting point.
Employees also need to know the plan for how that
vision will be achieved. We need to communicate
not just where the company is heading, but how
we’ll get there. That means sharing the specific
business strategies for the company, whether
that’s innovative product development, expansion
into other regions around the globe, or vertical
integration in order to own more links in the
supply chain.
The next step is to help employees understand
how their individual roles can support the success
of that vision. Whether they’re on the factory floor
or in the research lab, in accounting or sales, the
work they do every day has the potential to take
the company closer to the vision — or not.
THE POWER OF STORYTELLING
It also helps to let employees know what that
looks like. Go beyond the abstract to the specific
and give concrete examples of how individual
employees in a wide range of functions are doing
just that. Use channels like magazines, videos and
podcasts to tell these stories.
These kinds of stories help
employees understand
how their individual roles
support the vision.
For instance, if collaboration is important to
achieving the vision, show how someone in
training and development collaborated with
hourly employees to create onboarding steps for
manufacturing hires. Share the narrative of how
the western division collaborated with the eastern
division to switch from two different ordering
systems to one.
These kinds of stories help employees understand
how their individual roles support the vision. It also
recognizes employees who already get it. Making
heroes and celebrities of those people is one of
the best things we can do.
The next step is to help
employees understand how
their individual roles can
support the success of that
vision.
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