I know what you’re thinking, that the foremost role of social business is to democratize the actual strategy creation process.  It should be enabling employees from across the organisation to feed into the overall and unit strategies, and through this process the dissemination becomes much easier as people have already contributed to what it is they’re being asked to accept.

Of course that’s in the ideal world.  In reality however strategy is often cascaded down from the boardroom, where executives spend many a strategy building session drafting something beautiful that they then expect managers beneath them to internalize.

Strategy dissemination was the topic of a recent working paper by INSEAD (you can see Professor Charles Galunic discussing the research below), and it provides evidence, if any were needed, that such a cascaded approach really does fail to deliver the results needed.

The importance of engagement

Galunic’s research highlights however the importance of actually engaging with employees during the strategy formation period.  He believes that when senior managers do this, employees throughout the organisation understand and appreciate the strategy far more than when strategy is merely cascaded down the layers.

“Nobody has as much symbolic power as the general manager, as the head of that business unit. We humans are, in many ways, hierarchical. That lead figure has a lot of symbolic influence. So when that lead figure – he or she – when they come down and when they engage with employees and talk about strategy, I think it’s more likely to be believed and hopefully accepted.”

The role of middle managers

The research goes on to highlight the value of having two way dialogue between senior managers and the rank and file.  In the best examples, middle managers played a very different role than that in a traditional cascade environment.  They found that as conduits they were ineffective at embedding strategy, but where they came into their own was in providing employees with the right conditions and environment to support them in their work.

“Job conditions play a large role, as you might imagine. ‘Is my task clearly specified? Do I have the resources I need to do my job?’ When people like their jobs, often they like it because it makes sense in the greater scheme of things, or the teamwork, or certainly the development and training opportunities. We found that when people are positive about these things, they’re much more likely to be embedded in the strategy, which makes sense.” Galunic said.

So the morale of the story is that senior managers should be having a two way dialogue with employees about strategy, and middle managers should be supporting employees by providing them with an environment within which they can deliver on the agreed strategy.

IBM have long been a leader in this process, with their Idea Jams bringing together employees from around the world for several years now.  With over 300,000 employees, they wisely thought it sensible to engage as many of them as possible in determining the strategy the company should take.

The INSEAD research provides some clear evidence as to the prudence of such a strategy.

If collaboration was a natural and thriving endeavour, then it seems unlikely that there would be such a clamour from organisations to do it better.  A recent IBM study for instance found that over half of organisations wanted to collaborate better, which is great, except many organisations are setup with some natural barriers to the collaboration they crave.  Here are four of the main barriers that exist.  See how many are present in your own organisation.

Collaboration Barrier #1 – Hoarders

This is a problem I’m sure many of you are familiar with, and in many ways it’s a natural consequence of the way our renumeration policies are created.  Our organisations are typically setup to reward people for their individual achievements.  They have their KPIs and their performances are rated against these metrics (often at this time of year).  All of which may be great, but it does kinda encourage people to keep the knowledge they have to themselves.  When you’re in competition with your colleagues, that knowledge is not only powerful, it is also lucrative when it comes to determining the bonus you get or the pay rise you’ve earnt.

Collaboration Barrier #2 – Hidden knowledge

The people in your organisation know an awful lot.  In most cases that would be regarded as a real competitive advantage.  The problem is that most organisations are aware of but a fraction fo the knowledge held inside their employees minds.  Mining the knowledge employees have is of course merely half of the battle, for it’s then crucial that people are able to find the right experts to help them with the problem they have.  If you don’t know that knowledge exists, or you don’t know how to find it, then it makes collaboration pretty much impossible.

Collaboration Barrier #3 – Not invented here syndrome

Siloes are a common feature of many workplaces.  They could exist around functions or regions or even hierachies.  It’s also increasingly common that these siloes are given a large degree of autonomy as to how they operate.  Whether these barriers are physical or merely mental they are often extremely damaging to collaboration.  For instance, do your senior managers accept ideas from those beneath them in the hierachy or is there a culture whereby only those on the same level can collaborate?  Is there a culture where asking others for help is seen as an admission of failure or ignorance?

Collaboration Barrier #4 – Transferring hard to encode information

In knowledge management terminology there is explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge.  Explicit knowledge is the kind that is easy to document.  Tacit knowledge however is much harder, yet is often critical to the expertise we have as individuals.  Explaining how you ride a bicycle is very difficult for instance or how you’re such a good public speaker.  These things often take a lot of practice to build up the expertise, and explaining them to others can be a real challenge.  To transfer such tacit knowledge also often requires excellent working relationships between the two parties.  If you only have a weak connection, it is unlikely that the knowledge transfer will take place.

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