The Dangerous Disconnect: Why Separating “People” from “Strategy” Is Killing Your Performance

There seems to be this desire to separate the human side from the financials and even the plan, even the competitive strategy. And my answer is: why would you?

The Entrepreneurial Model Gets It Right

Think of Richard Branson. He would see a space, an opportunity, where he’d go, “There should be a better service, cheaper and easier for clients to access.” So, he had this competitive understanding of the space and then would leap in. He could completely disrupt from a customer responsiveness standpoint because he understood that energized people naturally create better customer experiences.

The Two Levels of Culture

There are two levels of culture that we need to understand:

The Foundation Level: The underpinning environment that sets an organization up for success. It’s all the things that need to be in play for individuals and therefore an organization to be executing strongly and setting themselves up to perform really well.

The Distinctive Level: The behaviors that are unique to that business. This organization has to be highly innovative. That one has to be very close to the customer at the interface because it’s embedded in a customer-intimate strategy. 

The Human Resources Trap

There’s a history of feeling like the human side of business is transactional. There’s somehow this sense that employees—even the titles “human resources” and “employees”—are just yet another line item, another resource. It’s not about actually having people energize and deliver in the business. It’s more about having people show up and just do a job.

This is going to become even more important because of AI and how it affects roles and how you deploy your workforce. We underestimate what we need to do to set people up to be their very best.

The Leadership Shift Required

The most important role of the leader is to enable their people, their team, versus saying “team, you need to go over here and do X, Y, Z.” It’s to create the conditions for performance and strong execution. It’s not to do it yourself or to deliver the order to do it – rather it is to unlock the firepower within each individual.

You need to sit down with your top and emerging leaders and give them the benefit of your know-how. Really immerse yourself in their conversations. Bring them along to meetings where they’re going to get exposure.

You ought to be really unleashing that know-how in the people that most count, rather than feeling you have to do it all.

The Blind Spot Reality

There’s something about blind spots and seeing how leaders impact the leadership team dynamic. There always is someone in that leadership team that is having a disproportionate and negative impact on that team, and they are somehow protected by a blind spot.

And it’s mirrored throughout the organization. You go through the levels, and that is being replicated, because that’s what they are experiencing and seeing rewarded. “This is valued here. I’m going to follow this lead.”

The Integration Imperative

Understanding culture and the human side of the business is as critical as the financials. Because ultimately, culture determines how your strategy comes to life.  Leadership should be looking at all the ways we operate and reshaping what we’re doing in a way that reinforces the culture we’re going for.

To what extent are you setting your people up to be their very best, rather than just telling them what to do?

Learn more about our approach to integrating people and strategy to drive business growth on Ignition Institute.