Strategy Alignment and Leadership, with Anthony Taylor

In this podcast episode, Dr. Jonathan H. Westover talks with Anthony Taylor about strategy alignment and leadership. Anthony Taylor is the CEO at SME Strategy. Anthony has facilitated strategy sessions for organizations big and small across North America and beyond. He is the author of two books and the host of the Strategy and Leadership Podcast. He holds a degree in business administration with a specialization in marketing. Anthony speaks fluent French, loves soccer, and one of his life goals is to visit every MLB Stadium. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the HCI family of podcasts. We're your source for personal, professional, and organizational growth and development. We share our own original research, explore industry trends, and interview executives and thought leaders from across the globe. Join us for practitioner-oriented content around all things leadership, HR, talent management, organizational development, and change management. Maximize your personal and organizational potential with the HCI family of podcasts.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Anthony Taylor, welcome to the conversation today.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for having me, John.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  It is a real pleasure to be with you. You're joining us from Vancouver, Canada. I'm south of Salt Lake City in Utah. Today, we're going to be talking about strategy, strategic alignment, and how that connects with leadership. And when that misalignment occurs, how, you know, perhaps to recognize it and how to get back into realignment. This is a fun topic, and I'm really thrilled to have a chance to sit down with you and to explore this together today. As we get started, I wanted to share Anthony's bio with everybody. Anthony Taylor is the CEO of SME Strategy. Anthony has facilitated strategy sessions for organizations, big and small, across North America and beyond. He is the author of two books and the host of the Strategy and Leadership podcast. He holds a degree

• 1:19Speaker 00

  in business administration with specialization in marketing. And Anthony speaks fluent French, loves soccer, and one of his love, one of his life goals is to visit every MLB stadium. And can I ask, how far along are you on that goal?

• 1:35Speaker 01

  I'm at like 17, rounding 18 coming up in April. So, and of course, it's an international expedition every time I go. But yeah, I think I'm, I think I'm tracking pretty good. So I gotta get a couple more obscure ones, but looking forward to it.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Oh, man, you have me beat. I'm only at like five. So I have a long way to go. Well, very good. That's a lot of fun. That's a lot of fun. Well, again, it's, it's a thrill to be able to sit down with you. Anything else you would like to highlight, but with your own background before we dive on in?

• 2:02Speaker 01

  I think the only, I mean, I just love people. I love helping people. You know, when I started the organization, I was on a nonprofit board. I got Invited to a strategy retreat. I saw how impactful it was to help organizations, help people. I've also see a lot of people who don't like their jobs, who are feeling kind of stuck and like working with them, allowing an organization to have clarity. Just helps them have like just so much more purpose, so much more engagement to their work. So, you know, people walk away from me when I say I do strategic planning at a party. I don't know why, but I love what I do and I know I get to like help a lot of people and that's what it's all about.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  That is hilarious. So, so the strategic planning isn't like a party trick that everyone like flocks around. It's a bit of a repellent.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's about talking about, I bring it back to mission is like when you talk about yourself, I say I'm a strategic planning facilitator. They're like, huh, I have somebody else to go talk to. But when I say, hey, I help teams perform at their best. So you love your job or something like that. I've never said that, but you know, they're like, wow, tell me more. So it's being other people focused versus you focused. So strategic planning facilitator is me focused versus other people focused.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  It's all about the framing, right?

• 3:08Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Yeah. Well, yeah, I love that. And we've all been there, like we've all been in jobs, you know, perhaps that we don't love. Perhaps we don't find the greatest fit. There's not a great alignment and there's so many different reasons for that. Like there's so many different ways that that can occur. I found myself in jobs where, where that's happened, you know, maybe I have a jerk boss or, or there's a values incongruence with the team or with the organization or, you know, frankly, the pay sucks or the, the, the shifts don't work with my schedule or like there's a gazillion different things. I've, I've had jobs where all of those things, like I check all the boxes. All those things are awesome.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  But frankly, I just don't feel challenged enough. I just, I'm kind of bored, you know, and, and, and it's still, you know, just isn't doing it for me. And so like, there are so many different reasons why people might find themselves in that position. And it's just really, really a great thing to be able to take a step back, to be able to reflect, to analyze why you find yourself, you know, feeling that way. Cause then you can be proactive about addressing it. And sometimes that means looking for a new position, moving perhaps to a different team. At your organization or moving to a new organization. But the grass isn't always greener. And so sometimes it's just about recognizing why you feel that way. And what is it you can do, you know, where you're at? Sometimes it's just blooming where you're planted and finding ways to kind of adjust your mindset

• 4:35Speaker 00

  or finding ways to really thrive where you're at. By, you know, shifting the way you interact with people and how you're, you know, try to find ways to thrive, you know, in your current situation. Anyways, I love it. I love, and I love that, you know, you do so many great things to, to support people. Because we, we spend so much time at work. We spend the vast majority of our waking hours at work. And I want everyone to be able to thrive and be happy and engaged and to have meaning and purpose. And what better way to help them have that in life than to help them have that at work, right?

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I haven't, the flip side of it or the other side of the coin is I haven't met an employer, a boss, employer that said, we want to create a bad culture, you know, like we, we don't want to create an environment where people hate it here and want to quit. It's very expensive to do so. The, the challenge is that they haven't necessarily named what it is. So there's kind of two parts to it. Is the organization clarifying what they want, what they expect, what they need, how it works? And, and having the commitment to do that, which is like your body of work, right? Or some version of, but also one of the things that you said and spoke to you just perfectly was the self-awareness to know what's important to you, what places engage you, not just doing the work, because it really is a harmony and making sure that the ingredients work for you.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  And then saying, hey, as an employee, here's what I want. As an employer, here's what I offer. And making sure that those two things can happen. I think the shift in, in this time of year is shifting more towards an employer kind of market. But that's not to say that as an employee, you shouldn't, you know, fight for what's important to you. Look for what you want, but it is a challenging time out there. So, you know, it, it, it, there's opportunities for both sides. Let's call it.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. Wonderful, wonderful. So, so talk to us a little bit about like how you approach it. If you go into, to work with an organization. I suspect you do work with individuals sometimes, maybe through coaching or or you know, executive trainings or whatever. But you know, the majority of the work you do, I think, is with organizations in strategic capacities. So you're, you know, you're going in, like you said, most, most leaders don't wake up in the morning thinking, ha, ha, ha, how am I going to be horrible to my people today? Or how am I going to create a really horrible culture? So most, most people want to have a great, dynamic organizational culture. They want to have good systems because it's, it's better that way. Like you, you have a better organization,

• 7:04Speaker 00

  you have, you're more profitable, you create better stuff that way. Right? And so as you start to go into an organization, as you're starting to work with them on their strategy, like, how do you go in and approach that initially?

• 7:17Speaker 01

  So let's assume that for the folks that are on the podcast, you know, we're preaching to the converted, so to speak, because we know the value of good people, people, good HR, good systems. But you know, some of that work is an internal leader. So if you're listening to the podcast today, then you're in an organization that doesn't see the value of, you know, certain things that John and I are talking about, then it's like, hey, how do you get people on board with the, the, the benefit, you know, the future benefit of the future needs to be greater than the pain of change. So like, why, why do that? What is that future that everybody wants to see? In my experience, everybody has some version of good, right? There's some version of organizational good, there's some version of team good, there's some version of individual good, etc. And what often happens is the team don't talk about it explicitly. Excuse me, John. So one of the

• 8:02Speaker 01

  things that you were talking, the word like triangulate is kind of part of the work is, you know, if there's something that an individual wants, well, if there's an executive team of nine, 10, 11, 12 people, all of them have their version of good for themselves and for the organization. But most of the time, or much of the time, they've never actually taken the time to agree on what good looks like. John, have you ever taken out 10 of your friends for dinner or had 10 friends to plan a night out for?

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's really hard.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  It's really hard. Yeah, because everybody's got their preferences and that's going for dinner, not the place you spend 50 hours a week and like years of your life towards. And so why spend, you know, so people, I think, under invest in the time of aligning. On what good looks like, having the conversations that really matter as human beings, as employees, as organizations, so that there is mutual and explicit success that is shared. Uh, and so that's really the work that I do and it's fun because it's not hard and often people aren't that far off. Uh, but in the words of some rapper, I think it's Jada Kiss, it's like ninety nine point nine is not a hundred percent. And there's a lot that can get lost in that point oh one. And so just making sure that it's implied or explicit, not implied, um, individuals and teams.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  That's where we start working and I can go more into it, but I figured, you know, the why versus the what.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so really being super explicit and clear about, uh, that, that alignment on the front end, uh, is, is so, so important. I really like that focus on, you know, recognizing that we're, we're probably aligned on the vast majority, right? And not, not always.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  I notice probably, and it's that little bit of doubt.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. And not on everything and, and not always, but probably on most, right? And so, and maybe that's seventy percent, maybe that's eighty percent, maybe that's ninety nine percent, right? But it's, it's probably on a lot of it and, and we may, and maybe on the vast majority of it. But there's always going to be some of it where we're not. And that's the, that's the part we're taking for granted and that's the part that can actually really derail us. Uh, because it's, it's often subtle and it's those subtleties though, that when we take it for granted and when we don't openly communicate about those things, then we find, that's when we find ourselves in meetings where we're discussing big things. Uh, and we have these underlying assumptions about what is right, what is good, what's the, you know,

• 10:21Speaker 00

  appropriate way to approach this thing. And, and we're coming at it from totally different perspectives, right? Uh, and so we're all sitting around the room thinking we're all in like agreement on the foundational principles of like, how to approach this problem and we're not, right?

• 10:37Speaker 01

  And add a layer of complexity to that. So you eloquently said, hey, as a, as a team, basically we're probably aligned in that probably which I underlined. And then we go through, through most things, but what people don't recognize, especially. Ones in, you know, larger organizations is that probably in that ninety nine point nine as you get into and for those of you, you know, listening to it, I'm saying layers, showing layers down. That's where it really starts being expensive because they don't have as much agency to make the right choices. And so then you have different people converging, working on different things or diverging, rather, working on different things. And then that's where the like lost opportunity, the lost alignment, the lost culture, it really fragments the lower down you get in the organization.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  But it starts at the top. Sorry, John, I just, you know, I thought it'd be worth highlighting.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, absolutely. So, so what, what have you found to be an effective approach for really drilling down and uncovering some of those hidden assumptions? You know, that maybe that one percent, maybe it's five percent, 10%, whatever, but like whatever those kind of those, those hidden assumptions or incongruencies that we all kind of assume are shared, but they're not. And, and those become the derailers down the road when we're trying to have these bigger conversations. You know, strategic, cultural, whatever. How, how do you go about approaching those?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  So when we get brought in, we're at the point where a team has seen our stuff online and they're like, oh, I like this approach. And then we align the like board, leadership, team, SLT, depending on how it goes, on basically five buckets. Where are we now? As in where we're starting from, including what's kind of up in the horizon. Where are we going? So vision, mission, values, you know, the really like critical success stuff. Within vision, I'll say not just a statement that sounds good, but like if we literally got to that place verbatim, what would it look like? And are we all agreeing on going there? And then values, what does it look like? What does it not look like? Because some people have words, but no description. And then again, that's the ambiguity. So trying to remove as much ambiguity as possible. What's going to get in the way so that we can prioritize risks or perceived risks?

• 12:43Speaker 01

  So, John, let me ask you, when you go, you mentioned you've gone to a couple of baseball games. I presume you travel outside of Utah from time to time. How often, how early do you show up to the airport?

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Oh, I mean, it depends. If I'm going to a big airport, you know, it's going to be earlier. But, you know, I tend to be one who, you know, maybe an hour. And a half early. I'm not really like a two hour early person. I'm not like a cut it really close kind of person either. So I'm kind of in between.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Perfect. So some folks are cut it really close people and some people are two hours and a half, no matter where I'm going. That just means you have a different tolerance for risk, but it never gets talked about within an organization in terms of how big and scary are some of these things that we need to work on. Some people might not see employee disengagement or communication as a problem. They might only look at the numbers and I'm not saying finance or other. So that part of like what's going to get in the way is underused in strategic planning in my belief. So where are we now? Where are we going? What's going to get in the way? What do we need to prioritize? Organizations often say, hey, there's six or seven or eight kind of really important things we need to work on. And then I say, great, pick three. It means you have to say no to some stuff, but that explicit choice allows you and

• 13:49Speaker 01

  everybody in the organization to confidently say, no, I'm not taking on this extra project right now because it is not a priority. Because this project is or this initiative is, and that's the like you can, you have to build alignment. But that's one of the areas where are we going? And then how we communicate it? How do we roll it out? How do we pull people into the plan? One of my favorite leadership quotes is a leader's, a leader with no followers is just going for a walk. So as a leader, you know, are people following you in your plan or are you just, you know, working on stuff? And so we don't try to find misalignment, but we do have a scorecard for it. So people can objectively and subjectively begin the conversation of where they're misaligned because nobody wants to call out something bad.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  You know, it just, people don't want to like, um, and so by giving them numbers, it just is, you know, it's not perspective. It's just a number. People seem more comfortable with that.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I like the, the challenge, the, the hard work of narrowing down priorities. That in and of itself is an exercise and that's, that's a really good opportunity for teams to start to, you know, go through the work of clarifying. You know, there's a whole bunch of things that get clarified as you go through that process. You know, I was, I went into work with an organization a while back and you know, they, they had like, you know, their strategic priorities, their, their list of strategic priorities. And it was like 25 items long, you know, and I'm like, this is. Not a list of strategic priorities. Like you can't focus on anything if it's 25 items long, right? Like you said, you really, if you're going to focus, if you have a focus list, like you're going to focus on anything,

• 15:22Speaker 00

  you're going to got to get that list down. Like at most, you're going to maybe have five things, you know, you probably want to get that down to like three things. Um, because you can't focus on 25 things that by definition is not a focus list, right? Um, and, and you're, you're throwing everything on that list if it's 25 things. And so you gotta be disciplined, like it just forces you to go through that disciplined process. And, and it hurts, it hurts to have projects that you have to say no to. Um, you know, people, people believe in those projects, people have worked on those projects. Uh, you know, and, and now you're having to, to really do the hard work of, of saying, I, you know, I know this is important, but it's not as important as this other thing.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  That, that's hard. Those are hard conversations to have, but they will, it is a necessary conversation and it will help you clarify what is most important and why, right?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  And I have our two frames. We talked, kind of started today about framing. So, so one is sometimes it occurs as stuff to do. And you perfectly said, hey, you know, there's projects, it's, it's not as important as this project. And that's kind of competing at the level of project. But when you can tie it back to that, because we want to get to this place. When you have like a, hey, all of us have the shared outcome, we're focused on the destination, not the roads. And so when you're just focused on, I want to take this road, I want to take this road, I want to take this road. Then you say, hey, why? So we literally call it the multiple destination trap. Different people have different destinations. It makes prioritization impossible. But once everybody's clear about where they're going, then they can kind of put aside their own internal biases or preferences for the outcome that they really want.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  No one really cares about the tactic. They just care about the outcome. So that's one. The other is around saying yes to things, right? Everybody wants to say yes to all of the projects, but by saying yes to everything, you're actually saying no to stuff. By going to this party, you're saying no to this other party. By having this meal, you're saying no to another meal. You can tell I like my food. So what we say, but and by saying no. To something, it allows you to say yes to something else. And people don't think about that second part of the math. By not resourcing this human being over here, it means we can put extra resources to there. But the math is, the math always math. It's sometimes one sided. Hey, if I say yes to everything, you know, no, no one thinks about the no. But by saying no, it gives you the opportunity for the yes.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And I, and I love having healthy ways to frame these conversations. And, and sometimes we get into hyper competitive, um, kind of scenarios. And then that can really quickly derail the types of conversations. We want to be able to be healthy and we want to, to be team oriented and collaborative as we're having these conversations. So I, I love that. As we are starting to wrap things up in the next few minutes, um, kind of let, I mean, there's so much more to discuss here, but you know, to kind of take us home. So, you know, obviously recognizing that we're only scratching the surface here, but you know, we, we assume, you know, we're getting into an organization. We have, we have buy in, uh, we, they recognize, they understand the importance of strategic alignment.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  They, they, you know, the team, the, the executive team, they, they know that that's a goal. They want to have it. They also recognize that they're not there yet, that, that they don't have that perfect alignment. Maybe they're 99% the way there, but they have some of these, these, uh, these areas that are, are not quite there yet, that, that are kind of hidden under the surface. You're doing the work with them to try to uncover those. You're, you're starting to, to, to shine a light on those. You're starting to uncover those. You're starting to, to work towards alignment. Now walk us through like next steps, like now, now you're starting to better understand those areas. You're starting to move forward. You, you talked a little bit about communication, um, throughout the organization now.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  What, what do you do continuing to work with, with these leaders? As, as you work towards kind of sustainable strategic alignment, moving into the future?

• 19:21Speaker 01

  If I understood your question, the organization has got to this point where they have clarity in terms of all of the kind of core stuff. They've begun to roll. And now what is that fair to say?

• 19:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  So ultimately, it's cascading. So it's getting that alignment at all levels of the organization. So top, down, bottom up. Additionally, it's building up the strategic kind of frameworks, muscle rigor within an organization to sustain strategy. So that means making sure that you have monthly and quarterly kind of rhythms. But then you're basically on the hunt for misalignment. And so whether that is, you know, communication, are we communicating effectively enough across all channels up and down? Should we improve our meetings? Are they performing at their best? Things like, you know, do we have a change management process to support these things? Is everybody clear about their roles? Is everybody clear about their, uh, you know, kind of KPIs or performance indicators?

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Like there's so much structural architecture and governance to build an organization that is high performing in strategy and strategic planning and strategic thinking. But I have found that if a team works on it really intentionally for six to nine months, they won't get very far. If they work on it really intentionally for nine to 12 to 18 months, uh, it's night and day. I find it really that like, of course, you're going to get quick wins over those couple of months. But in some people, they've been in that organization for 20 years. You know, it's the way we do things. But if you really focus on building a good strategy, building all those architectures, having people make it okay to say no to stuff because it's not aligned with the larger outcome. You'll have a couple hundred people all on the same page and it'll be phenomenal.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  You'll make more money, work will be easier, everybody will be more engaged and you'll hit all of your like people metrics. Like you'll hit them because people will know how to win. Last kind of quotable, if you don't know who's winning and you don't know what the score is, you probably don't play a game for very long. And so by not having any corporate measures, individuals cannot be successful. You need to know the rules and you need to know the score. That's all strategic planning does, puts the framework for people to win in your organization. And it's not just process, it has to be structural.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Anthony. This has just been a terrific conversation. Again, we've only scratched the surface here. There's so much more to dig into. But this is a great starter for anyone to be thinking about strategic alignment within your organization. As we wrap things up, I just wanted to give you a chance to share. The audience, how they can connect with you, find out more about your work, your team, and then give us the final word for today.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Awesome. I'd say best place to connect with me, AC Taylor 604 on LinkedIn, or Anthony C. Taylor 604 at LinkedIn, SMEstrategy.net is the website. If you look for the One Destination Scorecard, it's that quick assessment that you can do with your team. And then I'd say just be curious with your folks, you know, just, you know, implied versus explicit is we have 12 ground rules that we use ahead of every strategy meeting. And one is just to make sure it's explicit. And so if you take on that one thing as a leader, your performance will increase. People will get more bought into who you are and, you know, hopefully make your life better.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  I love it. Thank you again. I encourage the audience to reach out, get connected, find out more about what Anthony can do for you. And as always, I hope everyone can stay healthy and safe. They can find meaning and purpose at work each and every day, and I hope you all have a great week.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  Thanks for joining us for this episode of the podcast. We hope you stay healthy and safe, and please join us again soon.