Does Everyone Understand Your Strategy?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Strategy  

In the last few years, organizations have put a lot more focus on developing, and delivering, more effective and efficient strategies. The growth of portfolio management software has made the process more streamlined and automated, while at the same time providing more insight into what is happening. That drives better decisions, and ultimately results in better outcomes.

At the same time, the shift in mindset for project managers away from simply delivering to the triple constraint and toward enabling business benefits has helped to raise the awareness of strategy across more areas of the organization.

There is absolutely no doubt that there are now more people throughout any organization who know what the strategic priorities, goals, and objectives are. They may not be able to recount them word for word, but they know that their own work is contributing to revenue growth because the organization needs to improve revenue by 10% this year. Or that they are working on an initiative to launch a new product because the company is seeking to expand market share by 6%.

That’s all positive, but here’s where there is still a problem. While employees may know these strategies, many (perhaps most) don’t understand them.

Know versus understand
Organizations don’t establish a strategic priority for no reason. While higher revenue or lower costs have …

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