Viewpoint: How to Get Talented People Engaged in the Sport of Strategy

The picture of a successful company has evolved over the last decade to reflect changes in the business environment as well as changes in the nature of organizations. Going forward, the impact of talent structure and talent readiness will be the difference maker in the work of making strategy happen. The model for winning will be shaped by talent that is designed and built for the demands of being better, smarter, and faster than the competition.

What does strategic team engagement look like?

Across the broad conversation about engagement, degrees of engagement, the paths and nodes of engagement, we see a recurrent set of themes. Engagement means:

- Intentional learning and discovery, with an attitude of curiosity, attention, risk-exposure, discovery.

- Commitment and accountability, with a meaningful sense of responsibility, both personal and professional.

- Personal resolve and enthusiasm, with a mindset of energy and passion, motivation, and joy for the work.

- Interpersonal effort and influence, with the right level of advocacy, exchange and interaction with colleagues, and collaboration and empathy that serve the mission.

- A drive to organize, arrange, and help make sense of the many pieces of a project or mission in a way that helps spark progress and action. 

- The motivation to independently seek out the more challenging, forward-looking tasks that lay the groundwork for, or are part of, next steps and future phases of work.

- An effective, demonstrated drive to collaborate with teammates, along with the savvy and discipline to work with them to accomplish things that no one person can do alone.

- Appreciation and human respect, with the character and trust to approach every endeavor on a good path. 

These are principles, and they reflect in culture. These are attributes, and they reflect in everyday thought and behavior. These are elements of strategic talent, and they reflect the competence, motivation, and connections of a solid body of team capacity for making the company’s strategy happen. These help form the bridge from where a company is today — and where it needs to be tomorrow. This set of engagement factors often separates market leaders from the rest of the competitive pack. In the absence of these factors, strategic teams will falter.

What does it take to get talented people engaged?

Beyond the obvious notions of positive work engagement, we have found people with different kinds of talent are most engaged when:

ν hey are aware of and part of the strategic agenda of the business. They are able to see themselves and their work in the context of making the strategic agenda happen. They look at things from their perspective, as the working agents of the strategic agenda.

ν hey are matched into strategic teams on the basis of their specific talent blocks and beams, their technical, analytic, creative, resource, solution and relational skill sets, and their combination of experience, temperament and business expertise.

ν hey are immersed in the cultural agenda of the business, where the everyday thought and behavior of people across the organization serve as a foundation for, and expression of, what matters in making strategy happen.

These are the content and context markers for true engagement, where people see themselves as part of something important and valuable. These help define the questions and answers that are blended by people who are gauging their intentions, objectives, and challenges. Strategy engagement is a personal and professional choice, an act of moving from departure points to destination points. And while people have different motives, their essential need to be part of something important is central to engagement.

For those who lead and manage at every level of the company, here is what really matters. First, getting our people exposed to the strategic agenda, the picture of what we stand for as a company, and the picture of where we’re headed, and why. This seems so simple, but many in the workforce have no idea, and that’s a shame. Next, getting our people settled in the right strategic teams, in the right roles, with the right support and the right interfaces. Team design is critical, roles and responsibilities are important, interaction norms and practices are catalytic. Third, getting our people settled in cultural and subcultural terms, with the awareness that culture informs and influences the strategic efforts of the organization in different ways.

These three things encourage and enable people to become more engaged and to sustain that engagement. However, talent is something that is shaped by many things. Knowledge, experience, perspective, background, education, demeanor, and a host of other factors shape personal talent and professional readiness. The bottom line is both simple and complex, and it comes down to getting people into sync with the “why, what, how” of making strategy happen.      

Daniel Wolf is president and co-founder of Dewar Sloan, a consulting group focused on strategy direction, integration, and execution. He is author of “Strategic Teams and Development: The Field Book for People Making Strategy Happen” and “Prepared and Resolved: The Strategic Agenda for Growth, Performance and Change.”