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Jack and Jill, co-CEOs of Hill & Co, had a simple vision. At the recent leadership strategy off-site retreat, it was decided that Hill & Co would build a network of dew ponds on the surrounding uplands to increase the water supply for their livestock, and thus accelerate their expansion.

There was a lot to do—they would have to accelerate the R&D of chalk puddles, get their first pilot pond operational, scope potential sites, obtain funding, launch a recruitment drive to scale up for the implementation, and much, much more.

To help align the staff to this new strategy, the leadership team developed a strategy deck, and at the next town hall meeting, communicated the vision to the team. The staff were excited—this promised to be the breakthrough they had been waiting for.

But despite the brilliance of their strategy, over the coming months, its execution lagged. Morale waned and money started to quickly run out. Jack and Jill were at a complete loss. They had a great strategy, they had a great team, and the team believed in the strategy—so what went wrong?

In their desperation to get the project back on track, “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water”. The rest—they say—is history.

While this may be a satirical recount of a fabled verse, it is a story that we hear over and over again at Kognitive. The challenge of aligning staff to strategy, it seems, is older than the nursery rhyme itself.

The two facets of alignment

Our research suggests there are two main facets to alignment—intellectual and emotional—both of which must be addressed if we are to effectively align our staff to strategy.

Intellectual alignment

Before staff are able to meaningfully advance the organisation’s strategy, they need to know what it is and how they can meaningfully contribute to it. Intellectual alignment is about every employee understanding, cognitively, the vision of the organisation and how their role and goals contribute to the organisation’s success.

While this seems obvious and simple, many of our brain’s cognitive processes make it incredibly elusive and complex to achieve. One of the main culprits is the infamous cognitive function of memory.

Memory

Despite us being able to recall many events from years ago with crystal clarity, human memory is actually incredibly unreliable and complex. For example, can you recall what you had for dinner 12 nights ago or the clothes you wore 9 days ago? Have you ever forgotten to call a friend back? Or have you ever forgotten a person’s name immediately after meeting them?

Although it may seem that your memory works in mysterious ways, scientists have identified predictable rules that our brains follow to encode and recall information. To help us uncover these rules and how they can be used to help staff better remember the organisation’s strategy, let’s complete a simple exercise.

COMPLETE MEMORY EXERCISE →

How did you go? Did you get all 20 words? Don’t worry if you didn’t, unless you were using a memory technique or have a photographic memory, it's completely normal to only remember a few words. Why is that, and what determines which words you remember? At Kognitive, we’ve developed a simple framework to help you answer these questions. You can use it to help staff remember other important things as well, such as your strategy. We call this framework FEARS. FEARS is an acronym.

F

requency

Corresponding words:

blue.

As you undoubtedly noticed, the word blue appeared three times. Repetition is one of the oldest known ways of encoding information to memory. It is the foundational memory tool used in traditional education (times tables flashbacks anyone?). Repetition has been studied extensively by scientists, and while the frequency and duration can impact recall, as a rule of thumb, the more frequently something is repeated, the more likely we are to remember it.

Practical takeaway: Communicating the new strategy to staff at the town hall once is not enough. It must be communicated repeatedly over an extended period of time (much more than we intuitively think) in order for it to be encoded into the memory of staff.

E

motion

Corresponding words:

holiday, covid, coffee, kiss and any other words which align with your passions or fears, wants or worries.

Emotion supercharges the encoding of memory. Any event that you are easily able to recall will most likely have been emotionally charged. Think... first kiss, wedding day, birth of a child, first time you jumped out of a plane. But the emotion does not have to be positive. For example, can you recall where you were when you heard that someone famous or someone you cared about passed away or where you were when you learned of a tragic event such as September 11? Negative emotion is more precarious, however, and recent studies have shown that too much of some negative emotions, such as stress, can also impair memory function.

Practical takeaway: Strategies and strategy decks are often very dry, emotionless documents. The more emotion you can inject into your strategy and the communication which surrounds it, the better chance it has of being remembered. One of the most influential ways of doing this which has emerged in recent years is creating a ‘meaningful’ organisational purpose.

A

ssociation

Corresponding words:

mountain & goat, chicken & egg, kognitive & brain, blue & dog (for bluey fans).

Association has been connected to the roots of memory function for over 130 years. Association is one of the main techniques often used in memory hacks, such as memorising names, among other things. While much of our brain’s association memory function is unintentional, intentional associations can be utilised to significantly improve the retention of information.

Practical takeaway: Use intentional associations within the communication of your strategy where possible. Acronyms such as FEARS can also be an effective way of creating a pseudo-association and encoding strategic information such as values, key initiatives, goals, etc.

R

ecency

Corresponding words:

smile, shoe.

Psychologists have identified a cognitive tendency for the items, ideas or arguments that come last in a sequence to be remembered more clearly than those that came before them. This effect is closely related to primacy, the tendency to have better recall for the items at the beginning of a list or experience.

Practical takeaway: The way your strategy is structured, organised and presented makes a difference to how it will be remembered. Pay special attention to the start and end of your strategic documents and presentations.

S

tories

Corresponding words:

While it may not have been directly highlighted by the word memory activity, the S in our FEARS model is certainly related to words—in fact it’s made of them: stories. Stories are deeply ingrained in human history and are fundamentally intertwined with human memory. “Researchers have found that information presented in story form is considerably more likely to be recalled than comparable material presented using expository methods”.

Practical takeaway: Converting your strategy into an emotive story can dramatically increase its retention.

📳 Book a discovery call to learn about how we have helped strengthen alignment at leading organisations around the world.

Emotional alignment

If intellectual alignment is about the brain, then emotional alignment is about the heart: it’s about buy-in. It’s about employees taking action not because they have to, but because they are inspired to.

When staff have bought into the organisation’s vision, when they are emotionally invested in the organisation’s success, not only are they more likely to remember the strategy, but they are much more likely to act upon it. And motivation, discretionary effort, and engagement increase.

But how do we go about building more emotional and intellectual alignment in our organisations? While this is a complex task that Kognitive’s accelerators and consulting address, here are five strategies to help get you started.

Practical tools and tips

1.
Direction
2.
Alignment
3.
Accountability
4.
Speed & Agility
5.
Focus
6.
Collaboration
7.
Leadership

1. Communicate with FEARS

While it is not always possible to incorporate every element of the FEARS model in your strategy roll-out, incorporating as much of FEARS as possible in your strategy and the communication around it will dramatically increase the likelihood of your strategy being remembered by staff.

2. Double down on emotion

Modern workplaces have become notoriously famous for being dry, emotionless environments—but nothing could be more harmful to your organisation’s productivity. Despite being incredibly small, the emotion centres of the brain are one of the oldest and most powerful areas, and they can guide, influence and overcome logic with ease and indecision.

Does that mean we all need to sit in a circle and start to sing kumbaya each morning? Not at all— but the more positive emotion you can inject into your organisation, the better. Everything from creating an emotive organisational purpose or vision to selling strategy with stories, to championing authenticity and gratitude, showing a genuine interest in the wellbeing of staff pays big dividends.

Some of the benefits of introducing more positive emotion we have observed include:

Guiding mind wandering and creative insights towards organisational priorities.
Improving the recall of strategy and goals.
Increasing sense of belonging, loyalty and staff retention.
Enhancing team collaboration, engagement and productivity.
Improving the organisation’s bottom-line.

3. Break down the strategy in a meaningful way

Just as important as staff understanding the strategy is their appreciation of how they can meaningfully advance it. However, much like Chinese whispers, the meaning and intent of the strategy often gets diluted as it cascades down the business. Likewise, the process of breaking down strategies for teams and individuals can be so time consuming and complex that many organisations, quite rightfully, avoid it.

An incredibly simple and powerful approach which overcomes these challenges is Objectives and Key Results or OKRs. Originally developed in the 1970s by Andy Grove, the founder and COO of Intel, OKRs have since been adopted by the who’s who list of innovative companies such as Google, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, Deloitte, Accenture as well as a myriad of smaller organisations.

But a word of warning. Although the concept of OKRs is incredibly simple (which is part of the reason they are so powerful), implementing OKRs can be illusively complex and difficult—and a false start can be devastating to business performance, staff trust and morale. Book a discovery call if you’d like to learn more about how we’ve helped organisations overcome these pitfalls and successfully implement OKRs.

Construction workers breaking down giant cookies into manageable chunks.

4. Make KPIs public

Whether you’re using OKRs, KPIs or a variation thereof to track performance, one of the simplest ways to improve organisational alignment is to make them public (that is, available to all in the organisation).

While there is the obvious need to keep some projects confidential (such as an upcoming acquisition or restructure), many leading organisations such as Google, Adobe, and Twitter have found this transparent approach fuels greater collaboration, productivity and alignment.

When all goals (and progress) are public, it becomes incredibly simple for staff to see how their contribution fits in the bigger picture. It also becomes incredibly difficult for low-performers to hide, and high-performers to get the inherent recognition they deserve. In addition, transparent goals encourage more collaboration and cross departmental creativity, as people become aware of what others are working on and who they should contact should they have an idea which would require working with others outside of their traditional interaction.

5. Introduce DRIs

If you’ve addressed the intellectual and emotional dimensions of alignment but are still having things slip through the cracks, a tiny change you can make to improve accountability is introducing DRIs. Originally developed by Steve Jobs, DRI stands for Directly Responsible Individual. At Apple, everything has a DRI, from an action item on a meeting agenda to the largest project in their pipeline.

As former Apple employee Gloria Gin commented on Quora, DRIs work “phenomenally well”, particularly noting their value when:

solving complex, cross-functional issues,
it’s unclear who’s got the ball and what should be happening,
everyone knows that something is important, but no one feels like it’s their responsibility to see it all the way through, or
knowing who needs to be fired after a major mishap.

Although DRI is a very small and simple tool, its power and potential is enormous. What could DRIs do for your organisation?

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