Do you have a people strategy/vision for your organisation? If the answer is no, then that’s perhaps the first step. They don’t have to be overly complicated, in fact the best ones tend to be simple statements. Above all they need to be easy to communicate and something for the organisation to rally around.
If you have your strategy the next question is how do you turn it into a reality i.e., what are you going to do and who is going to do it?
So how do you turn vision and strategy into reality?
Having previously worked in senior people roles and being accountable for setting and delivery of a vision, strategy and plan, here are our top 4 tips:
#1 Define what you need to do
Break the strategy into activities. Firstly, this should be ‘what’ you will implement/change i.e., a new reward or workforce strategy. Secondly ‘how’ i.e., what products, solutions or services the People team will implement and support.
#2 Be realistic
We’ve often seen plans with 10, 20, 30 plus activities to be delivered. Often within challenging timelines. Clearly each of these activities may be important to the team requesting them. However, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to deliver everything. The old adage of Under Promise and Over Deliver is a good one to remember here.
#3 Agree the delivery plan
Avoid 12 month or longer plans. Realistically you will only be able to plan on those things that are immediately required. Trying to think about a project that’s due to commence in eleven months’ time is distracting and leads to the issue highlighted in #2. However, that’s not to say that you only think about short term deliverables. Having a wider sense of your strategy and organisational direction (i.e., the organisation will grow by X% over the next 2 years) will help you break down the strategy and plan into ‘bite size’ deliverables. As a result you can define a pipeline of activity. This should then support better allocation and management of resources (both people and budget) and provides a greater chance of success.
#4 Define clear accountabilities and responsibilities
Once you know what you need to deliver and by when, you will need to define who will undertake the work. Using the standard Ulrich model, the following should be considered:
- People Business Partners need to be working with their business/organisational heads to understand their strategic direction. As a result they can influence the people strategy to support their aims. They should also be encouraged to help prioritise as let’s face it, very few People teams have access to unlimited resources and the day job doesn’t go away!
- Centres of Excellence need to turn the ‘what’ into tangible solutions that support delivery of the vision.
- People Operations need to understand how to turn the solution into a deployable option. Taking into account possible changes to technology, processes and people.
For organisations not operating within the Ulrich model, the people resources implementing the vision still need to be able to undertake the actions called out above. Knowing who will be accountable is one thing, assessing their technical skills to deliver the plan is also reasonably straightforward. However, there is often one element of success that’s overlooked….
Who actually has the energy to drive and deliver the change?
For example, the Head of Reward may have all the technical reward skills and competencies. However, do they have the energy needed to drive the change needed? Standard behavioural assessments won’t be able to answer that question. The GC Index though can provide that critical insight, ensuring you have the right balance of people to turn your strategy into a successful reality.
InFocus HR, in partnership with The GC Index will help your people leadership team transform a strategic vision into clear, compelling actions based on the ground-breaking language and framework of The GC Index
For more information on how we can help you turn your vision into successful reality please click on this link