Ready to Drive Results from the Bottom Up?

For the past six weeks we’ve dedicated the OnStrategy newsletter toward sharing simple steps for driving results from the bottom up within organization. And since we’re adding 500 new subscribers with each edition, we thought a quick recap is in order for those who’ve missed it.

What is driving results from the bottom up?

Driving results from the bottom requires your organization to shift its thinking to build a foundation that supports sustainable strategic focus. It takes the initial spark of strategic planning and cultivates it into the fire that drives your team forward.

Keeping that flame alive requires your team to take ownership and accountability for the contributions they own. Sure, ownership and accountability inherently drive engagement – but more importantly, it provides the clarity and focus that fuels sustained strategic performance.

How do you get your organization to become a self-sustaining flame? Here are a few places to start:

• Don’t oversimplify your strategy. Your ability to define the critical few makes it clear what you need to be focusing on and why. But don’t strip details for the sake of brevity.
• Without individual goals, you won’t win. Cascaded accountability is everyone’s business. Having individual goals allows each member of your team to know where they fit and why their contribution is crucial to the success of your strategy.
• Individual teams can self-manage. Providing defined individual outcomes and allowing people to take risks help build leaders within your team. Plus, self-managing teams don’t require micromanagement and they create innovative solutions for the problems they face.
• Focus is measured in days and weeks, not months and quarters. Your ability to tie strategy to your day-to-day activities is key to keeping it top of mind. Letting it fall by the wayside will be its downfall.
• Transform your weekly staff meetings. Eliminate the fluff from your meetings and instead focus on your strategic performance and priorities. Meetings driven by metrics are infinitely more valuable than ones that are not.

Creating and adopting a culture that supports sustained strategic focus is neither linear nor exact, but doing so gives your organization the fuel it needs to achieve your vision. It’s still the strategy leader’s job to guide and manage your team so you can achieve the outcome you’re seeking. However, the road to success will be much easier if you’ve fostered an environment where strategy is driven from the bottom up rather than the top down.