If you’ve been tasked with putting a plan into action, this episode is for you.
Your company’s executive team has just announced their new master plan for growing the business. Now it’s your job, as a mid-level manager, to put it into practice. Deep breath. Apart from the inevitable interpersonal and operational drama that change management causes, this is an opportunity to show that you know your stuff.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Andrea Belk Olson is a strategy consultant who’s written for HBR about the challenges executing a strategy presents for mid-level managers, like when the plan seems vague or uninspired or unattainable. She’s also written about the opportunities carrying out the master plan can present, which she and I will cover from the beginning to the end of our conversation. She’ll advise on how to get clarity when there isn’t enough and how to address employees’ skepticism.
ANDREA BELK OLSON: I think it crosses both genders, but I think traditionally it does fall in a women’s camp. Because stereotypes are bound, women tend to execute very, very effectively and efficiently. And that can be a trap, because once you are the one that’s seen as getting it done, you’re not seen as the one that’s thinking strategically. And I think that there’s three big traps that women especially fall into in this arena.
ANDREA BELK OLSON: To your point, and what we alluded to before is, the first thing you shouldn’t do is hit the ground running. After that big town hall presentation where everybody gets excited and they’ve got this elevation and motivation and you want to start going and doing, the first thing you have to understand is, I don’t have enough information. I have a very high-level overview of a bunch of generalities.
So, for example, you might have questions about what success looks like? And let’s say you’re heading a marketing team and you say, “Okay, great, we could put together a few campaigns. We can do some tactical things and really get growth up.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Right. You’ve got nothing to lose by going to your boss and saying, “I bet the strategy conversations are going to hit this part of the organization or this part of the operation, and I’d be very happy to help you understand it at the ground level if that would be helpful to you.”ANDREA BELK OLSON: Exactly. And it has to be at that same strategic level.
ANDREA BELK OLSON: Right. Because oftentimes that strategy document, whatever form it takes, can be an oversimplification of what the strategy really means. And so, people tend to try to fill in the gaps with their own assumptions. And there were big decisions made behind the scenes because really the best strategy is not just about what you’re choosing to do, but what you’re choosing not to do.
ANDREA BELK OLSON: Personally, yes. I worked in an environment many years ago – I was the only female on an all-male executive team. So, there was a very different atmosphere to contend with. And I think that the question you pose is really partially driven by this antiquated perception that women are less assertive. I think that there might be a perception that we need to be pressured to ensure our team is backing us.
ANDREA BELK OLSON: I think it’s a fantastic approach. And I mean this in the best possible way, but I almost perceive it in the sense of raising a child. If you have a child that’s upset, you want them to stop and try to think about and articulate why they’re upset.
And we had a client, a mid-level manager at a large multibillion-dollar financial institution. And a new corporate strategy had just been rolled out, they wanted to focus on a set of specific products and services as their opportunity to grow. And so, what happened is, is this department head, she was in a service area that was a series of supplemental services that complemented these products, and she actually took the initiative to develop a supporting strategy with her entire team.
You can say, “Well, it wasn’t us, we’ve checked all our boxes.” But it doesn’t mean that that is not going to impact overall organizational culture and organizational success at the end of the day. I think it’s important for mid-level managers to see if something is not working six months… a year is a long time. That’s a lot of energy, resources and money. Speak up early if something’s not hitting the mark. Think about and try to identify what those possible causes are.
ANDREA BELK OLSON: Exactly. To assume that you have all the answers just because you are the manager or the department leader is very presumptuous. When we talk about communication, and my personal style was meet with the team weekly – a big whiteboard of what’s going right and what’s not, what do you need to make it right? Because hiccups happen, things slow down, something is not delivered on time, and that’s going to be the way business operates sometimes.
JENNIFER LONG: Yes, you have. I have a very current story actually. I’ve been on a project executing a strategy that I was, am, really excited about, really a new learning approach, very, very excited about it. And we’ve been working on it for about a year. And in the course of working on it, we learned new things, things happened in the market. We learned what it would actually take to execute on this strategy.
AMY BERNSTEIN: And that was very powerful. Because I heard part of that conversation. And to me that was a form of really hands-on analysis. Real hands-on analysis that where you broke down the original concept and you rebuilt it to see if, given what you know about how to do this and what our learners want, would this work? And then I thought… I felt that you were bought in.
I was pretty desperate because how can you do an automation when people don’t learn how to write the code? But then one element that I think is human that I play with is everybody think, “Okay, that’s the strategy that Gabriela wanted, but what’s in for me? What does it get me? I had to do all this.” So, I got the job description in the market from HR, also salary range of what is a manual QA.
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