Recently I asked an employee of a company what he did. He said he was responsible for preparing sales documents in department PKVDIVU2.
When someone has to identify himself by his personnel number, the name of his department is a string of letters and he cannot even name his position — where is this person supposed to draw motivation from?
What if the same person said: “I make sure customers are excited about our products in the advisory conversation”?
In one survey, sixty percent of middle managers said they could not coherently explain their company’s strategy. Not the employees — middle management.
What sets strategy activation apart from strategy communication
Anyone who wants to put a strategy into action has to do two things.
First, make sure that everyone involved can tell the same story about the future of their company — in images and examples that describe what is to change.
Second, make sure that those affected can describe their own contribution and know how to bring the principles of the strategy to life in the decisive situations of everyday work.
The difference from communication lies in the direction. Communication transmits. Activation asks back whether what was meant has arrived, and accepts the answer even when it is unpleasant.
The case
A few years ago, we accompanied the IT division of a leading insurance company through its digital transformation. Employee satisfaction was at rock bottom. No one gave credit when the technology worked; as soon as there was a disruption, people complained.
Interviews made clear that colleagues understood their job as working through tickets. Day after day. They saw no deeper purpose in it. Now global IT activities were to be merged, and people were worried about the future.
Together with key people at the client, we searched for a self-image that could carry a new self-confidence. The picture that emerged was that of the Digital Olympic Games. After all, IT was really there to help the company compete with other insurers through better infrastructure: to react faster, meet customer needs more precisely and close more business.
The metaphor was developed further with the involvement of around seventy leaders and employees. In several workshops, the content of the shared target picture was defined. A poster used sample scenes in the visual language of Olympic sports to show the cornerstones of the digitalization strategy: how people wanted to work together in future, what good leadership meant, what value they would offer users.
Someone who feels like a competitor in digital Olympic Games acts differently in everyday work than someone who draws numbers and works through tickets.
What was measured, and how
The Leadership Effectiveness Index rose from 36 to 73 points, an increase of 105%. Employee engagement rose by 56%.
Data were collected through the client’s Employee Engagement Survey: a standardized survey of all participants before the start and after fifteen months, n = 3,500, with the same version of the questionnaire at both points in time. The Leadership Effectiveness Index measures trust in the strategy and the leadership team; the engagement scores come from the same survey.
This is not a controlled study. Whatever else happened in those fifteen months — changes in personnel, market conditions, other programs — cannot be factored out. That is why we report the method as well.
Why metaphors work neurologically
One can invest a great deal of time and money in analyses and elaborate concepts. In complex situations, however, it matters more to create images that serve as orientation in people’s minds and show in daily situations what counts.
A metaphor is not decoration. It is a storage format. A four-word sentence that can be recalled in a decision situation beats a forty-page strategy paper that no one has at hand in the moment of decision.
Giving people a self-image that links the strategy with positive feelings — that is the core of strategy activation.
Where the approach reaches its limits
A metaphor cannot rescue a wrong strategy. It only makes it visible faster, because more people understand it and can therefore object. That is an advantage, but it does not feel like one at first.
Second: the metaphor has to come from within. An image imposed from outside works like a campaign and is treated as one. The case above worked because seventy people from the division developed it together, not because it was good.
And third, it wears out. After two to three years, an image is used up. Whoever keeps using it then produces cynicism. A target picture needs an expiry date that is set in advance.