Start talking about your strategic vision.

Stop calling your KPIs and OKRs your strategic plan.

Start talking about your strategic vision.

Use your KPIs and OKRs (or whatever acronym-du-jour you’re using) to measure progress on your strategy. But it’s not your strategy. It’s not your strategic vision

Those metrics do nothing to motivate and engage your employees. They don’t. Stop thinking they do.

Stop showing eye-chart slides at Town Halls that deep dive into your metrics as a means of talking about business performance.

Start talking about your strategic vision.

Call it a strategic plan if you want. I like to call it a strategic vision (ala the Groves methodology)

Your strategic vision is your shared vision and goals for your organization, designed around a set time horizon.

It’s your North Star for where your organization is going and what you want to achieve.

As squirrels pop up, you look to your strategic vision and ask yourselves how each squirrel can be in support of that vision.

When headwinds hit, you determine how to address them based on the guiding principles of your strategic vision.

And yes, there are action plans, deliverables, and metrics. You need those to achieve that strategic vision.

But those plans and metrics aren’t what your employees rally around.

They rally around the strategic vision, what they can hook onto and see themselves as a part of.

I see too many companies, too many CEOs, who talk about their KPIs as their strategy.

When I ask if they have a big-picture vision of where the company is going, they fall silent.

KPIs are easy to set and easy to track. Easy to talk about. But it’s not your strategic vision. And without the strategic vision, I have to ask, “These KPIs are in service of what exactly?”

The answer to that is generally financials. I get it. Your Board cares about that.
Your employees don’t.

Financials and metrics don’t drive engagement and performance.
A strategic vision does.

Now imagine the impact if you took the time to develop, communicate, and build belief in and commitment to your strategic vision. Imagine the impact on engagement. Performance. KPIs. Financials.

Start talking about your strategic vision.

Need help developing that strategic vision? Reach out and let’s talk. I love this work.

I’m a leadership team whisperer, executive coach, and speaker. I guide leadership teams in high-growth companies to achieve rapid growth in a healthy, sustainable way. I coach senior leaders to discover the path to lead with ease.