Dear employee: Get involved in the strategy work

As a private employee, strategy work can easily feel distant. But one should not be indifferent to the strategy of one's workplace. On the contrary, employees should interfere. And if they are not invited to it by the management, they themselves should insist.

Did you, as an employee, get Christmas lights in your eyes when your immediate manager or a top manager presented the latest strategy? Did you help develop it? And do you see the impact that the strategy headings have on the operation and development of your core mission?

As consultants, Resonans often hears the following answers when we ask employees about the strategy that applies to their workplace:

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• “The strategy is far from operations and everyday task solving”

• “Strategy work is not something I am involved in, it is something that the management takes care of”

• “Strategy work is some abstract something and often just numbers in spreadsheets or a slide pack”.

But in reality, the strategy, as a rule, affects your professional heartblood as an employee. It also often affects your affiliation, relationships, values and workplace raison d'être. It is your job satisfaction, your professional commitment and your well-being that are at stake.

At a time of complex societal challenges such as health, insecurity, climate, labour and a tight economy, finding new solutions to the core task and changing forms of cooperation also often becomes a key part of the strategy. Here, collaboration across disciplines, functions and sectors places great demands on the way you as an employee contribute to your expertise.

And for all of the above reasons, it is important that you as an employee are involved in the strategy work.

There is potential to interfere

All experience shows that you, as an employee, can feel disconnected from the strategy and may think that it is just on the management table and that it is the management that decides.

“In our experience, if employees speak out and strong professional staff are involved in strategic work, yes, the organization's contribution to crucial societal challenges is strengthened.”

Nanna Hebsgaard, partner, Resonance

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The problem with this is that there is a huge potential for you as an employee to actually take an interest in — and also actively contribute to — the design and realization of the vision and strategy of the workplace. Although it may not immediately feel easy to say. However, it is our experience that if employees speak out and strong professional staff are involved in the strategy work, yes, then the organization's contribution to crucial societal challenges is strengthened and thus the organization's long-term viability is strengthened.

In addition, the innovation and precision of the new solutions are strengthened because you, as a professional, are close to the daily task solution.

Thirdly, it also strengthens your own well-being and your own commitment as an employee. When you engage in strategy work, you get the feeling of being in the driver's seat, where you can influence things, rather than being a passive spectator.

Therefore, you need to interfere. Your knowledge is valuable in strategy processes — because management does not have the same knowledge about your task solution and does not see what you see.

Get involved step by step

If you do not feel involved in the strategy work of management, which unfortunately we often see examples of, then you should insist that your voice is important — and make it known. The knowledge and experience you have in meeting the end users and knowing their reality is worth gold in a strategy process. Strategies must be linked to the core business and the difference the company is helping to create. The concrete examples and stories from practices are central to get connected to the sometimes abstract language of strategy.

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But when you make your input known, do it constructively so that you don't contribute to the gap between management and employees.When engaging in strategy work, make sure that:

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1. Be preoccupied with challenges, but at the same time remember to see the afterpotentials in the strategy, and engage in the dialogue about the change process that management talks about
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2. Look for the good intention in management's communications and initiatives, even if at first glance you don't think it makes sense. Ask curious questions to create open dialogues rather than distance
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3. Insist on dialogues with management about how everyday life relates to your current or future strategy. Use the energy of your possible worries, or maybe even frustrations, to ask constructive questions
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4. Bring your own ideas to the field as well. Focusing on creating momentum can be useful, even in situations where a strategy needs to be challenged fairly
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5. And a final piece of advice is to contribute strategically by focusing on what you and your immediate management can help influence, and focusing less on terms that you will find difficult to influence.

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To make your voice heard, notice which channels or spaces you can speak into — and when and how you can make yourself playable. Where are the reasons why you can make your voice known? Is it at the weekly team meeting or the monthly staff meeting? Commit to the right, above the right, and don't let your frustrations infect your colleagues.Take responsibility and channel constructive professional cooperation.

And remember, if it's hard to spot what occasions you can seize, then eventually you'll have the director's email address.

Involvement of employees creates stronger culture

In organizations where employees engage in strategy work, we can see that the culture of collaboration in the workplace is becoming stronger. Especially if the employees agree with the management that the strategy work contains both joint studies of what bothers and creates challenges in everyday task solving, but also what potential for development exists. These can be small actions, initiatives or concrete actions that work well and should be enlarged or disseminated to more colleagues or disciplines in the workplace. For the benefit of citizens, customers and partners.

This part of strategy work can actually be very energizing for employees to be a part of. It also gives you the opportunity to become more aware of what you work with across work functions and disciplines, and what strengths you need to build on in the process of change. And at the same time, together you will become more precise about the challenges that the strategy should help to solve.

If the strategy work is also organised so that you together — perhaps even in new collaboration configurations — have the space to experiment with new ways of solving the core task, we see that strategy work will seriously strengthen the culture of collaboration in your workplace.

By trying new ways to solve tasks and collaborate in an experimental way, where there is room for you to learn and reflect together, you have the opportunity to discover new sides of each other as colleagues. Pages that can shake the way you collaborate and communicate with each other.