Page 197 - Successful Onboarding

“Limited Upside in Flying Blind”: Driving Strategic Insight • 181

The more versed employees become in the strategy, the more they
begin to regard their everyday work through that lens. They begin to notice
elements of their jobs they didn’t before and tie these elements to the strat-
egy. They also start to ponder their experiences and observations on the
job, leading to “Aha!” moments when they realize parts of the business
process that are inconsistent with strategy and discover improvements that
can push the strategy forward. These eureka moments in turn have the
derivative effect of improving how the organization does business—
whether by serving customers better, meeting additional customer needs,
or developing more efficient work processes.
A great deal of data exists to support the idea that any employee can
potentially help improve an enterprise. Toyota has a system in place that
queries front-line employees for ideas on how to execute the company’s
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strategy. The result: More than a million ideas a year —and despite recent
product safety issues, a company renowned for continuously improving
and innovating its product design, features, and operational effectiveness.
Google News originated from a little tool that one of the company’s devel-
opers devised in the wake of 9/11 to help himself find news about the
event. Now while this single employee at Google may have had a per-
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sonal need for his news service, it ultimately required an understanding
of Google’s strategy for this personal project to become a major competi-
tive force, one that many argue is largely responsible for challenging and
reshaping the news and periodical publication industries.
Google’s leadership simplified its strategy and widely communicated it
with a single sentence that it refers to as its mission: “to organize the world’s
information and make it universally accessible and useful.” We cannot tell
you if Google News’ originating employee in question understood this
strategy, but it was put out there loud and clear. If Google’s strategy
hadn’t been circulating in some form, the chances that this innovation
would have made it to the marketplace and in such a strategically consis-
tent form would have plummeted. It would have required dumb luck—
not something leaders can afford to rely on.
Beyond leading to “aha moments,” we’ve seen strong anecdotal evi-
dence suggesting that the sharing of strategic information has increased
motivation and led to positive results. During the economic downturn of
2008, when many firms were laying off employees and many companies
saw employee engagement at an all-time low, one new mid-level employee