Dear leader… The paradox of strategic management

Dear leader, perhaps you recognise this situation. After long preparation, you finally present your new strategy at a big internal meeting. Although the reactions are positive, they are also somewhat tepid. ‘Nice ambition but first we have to do something about the systems, the internal cooperation, the bureaucracy…’ You were a bit disappointed by the reactions. Why weren’t your people more enthusiastic and didn’t see ‘the big picture’?

A typical case of what I call the ‘paradox of strategic management’: Managers create a long-term strategy but they steer toward short-term results. Their employees realise those short-term results but mainly worry about long-term problems.

The result is often a considerable gap in the organisation that is hard to bridge with communication.

A major cause of directors’ short-term focus is the increased influence of external stakeholders. We see this not only in listed companies but also in unlisted companies, non-profit organisations and government agencies. All are critically monitored quarter on quarter by investors, advocates or public representatives who call for consequences at the slightest setback. It is a balancing act, that makes it virtually unavoidable that a significant portion of management time is invested in short-term problems and results. This is reinforced by the average length of time managers stay in their positions: high potentials think in increments of a few years at most. They therefore have a personal interest in focusing on the short term and on issues that will allow them to be successful in the foreseeable future.

As such, they have a different interest than the stable layer of employees who carry out the organisation’s daily routines. They mainly want ‘things to run smoothly’ and often have a keen sense of where their organisation’s operational pain points are. They have knowledge of products and processes and often have clear ideas about what should change structurally to achieve better performance. Unfortunately, these usually do not involve ‘quick wins’ but rather investments in systems or improving cooperation between departments. Things with an uncertain business case or a long realisation time. There you see the gap: for someone with a career horizon of several years and a steering period of a quarter, those years of lingering operational problems are not the first priority.

This conflict of interest is the source of many communication problems, and it explains the often tepid reactions of employees when a new strategy or direction is launched. The communication is often mainly about the management agenda. About the things that you as management think you can influence within your time horizon and that produce the results you are judged on. These are legitimate arguments in themselves. But as long as you do not also address the agenda of your employees, you will not get them cheering on the benches any time soon.

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Dear leader… 
Under this title, we are reissuing a series of 10 classic blogs on leadership communication and change. Michiel van Delden wrote them over the last few years, translating key lessons from these two disciplines to the world of managers.