Every one of your employees must clearly see how his actions and decisions impact execution of the business strategy. This is accomplished through a line-of-sight deployment process.

It is not enough to describe the strategy at an all-hands meeting, or even add to that the down-one-level strategy. Stopping the formal deployment process at that points leaves entirely too much to false assumptions and bad guesses.

You are familiar with the 5-Why problem solving process in which we keep asking why until we identify the root cause of the problem we’ve defined.

Strategy is similar. We have a strategy defined at the high level, but must roll it down level by level to understand what its implementation requires.

You know you have accomplished that when every employee can reverse that thinking process by describing their priorities and actions “so that.”

An example:

“I am reorganizing the warehouse and receiving area so that we can flawlessly add new materials and components to our storage so that we can begin producing samples of our innovative new products for market test so that we can expand sales of those new products to the most receptive markets so that we can grow our sales and profits so that we can deliver on our owners’ mission of providing reliable employment as we serve the evolving needs of the automotive aftermarkets.”

By using a line-of-sight deployment process surprises are reduced and prioritization and decision making are improved.

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