Imagine you’ve developed a clear and compelling strategy that addresses the most important challenges facing your organization. What could possibly distract you from such an endeavor? Quite a lot, in fact.
External developments can trigger excitement as well as anxiety. A competitor launches a new product successfully. An activist investor challenges your business model. News about the state of the economy, a geopolitical event, or a disaster suggests a worsening outlook. The rollout of a new technology like generative AI creates a rush of interest in how to deploy it.
Distractions also emanate from within organizations. Overconfidence leads to investment in risky areas. A lack of support manifests as obstacles during implementation. Historical failures inhibit commitment, as people favor safer bets. Lack of success increases pressure to change course. Micromanagement overwhelms your capacity to think. Or a crisis diverts attention toward rebuilding trust with stakeholders.
At worst, distractions slow down progress and waste effort. But they can also become the seeds of opportunities. After all, strategy is “continued, ongoing problem solving,” as UCLA professor Richard Rumelt put it.
Knee-jerk responses are common, but they rarely work. Leadership teams impose tighter controls in the form of more governance and reporting or focus effort within the organization as if they can insulate themselves from external developments. In doing so, they reduce the organization’s ability to respond to new information that could improve the strategy. They can also encourage people to rebel out of frustration — for example, by engaging in unethical activities or choosing to leave the organization.
Here’s how leaders can respond to the inevitable distractions productively.
Delve into the distractions.
First, understand the nature of the distractions and their causes.
Call out the distraction.
If you’re noticing that you or your team are getting distracted, call it out. It might be obvious — maybe you’re working on projects that aren’t aligned with the strategy, or you’re spending too much time discussing the implications of an external event with colleagues. Sometimes the signs are more subtle: People might start missing deadlines or stop coming forward with new suggestions.
Next, describe the distraction. Ask what your team is doing that isn’t aligned with the strategy and consider the significance of the distraction. This labeling increases self-awareness, which is important to do before exploring causes and actions.
Consider your energy and mood, too. Do you feel excited by the distraction because you feel it improves the strategy, creating more value, even though it wasn’t part of the plan? Does it feel more relevant and exciting than what you were working on before? Are you feeling burned out and in need of an opportunity to recharge and refocus? Or are you feeling unhappy with your project, role, or prospects?
Explore what the distractions are telling you.
Once you’ve described the distractions, work out what they’re telling you. New events, initiatives, or information may challenge the fundamental assumptions that underpin the strategy.
For example, a substantial shift in customer sentiment (toward, say, sustainability) may require a reevaluation of your product portfolio, whereas news about an increase in the cost of raw materials may not lead to a change in strategy, even if it puts a dent in short-term profitability.
Consider the following questions as you do this exercise:
- What have we learned from this distraction?
- How reliable is the insight? What is the balance between fact and conjecture?
- How does this change our strategic assumptions?
- What would we need to believe for this distraction to be helpful to our strategy?
- What would we have to stop doing to pursue this new opportunity and what are the relative merits? In other words, to enjoy the sunshine of a new opportunity, how much of a shadow will it cast on the organization?
- Should we revise the strategy? If so, how?
Understand the causes.
Digging into the causes of the distractions — whether you consider them helpful or not — tells you what, if anything, to change in the strategy and culture of the organization.
Distractions are often due to a lack of:
- Leadership commitment: Insecure or indecisive leaders who continually change focus encourage others to do the same.
- Realism: Overconfidence, driven by leadership flaws or past successes, can lead to straying into unchartered, risky territory.
- Involvement in developing strategy: A strategy developed by a small group in the C-suite leads to a lack of commitment, opening the door to distractions.
- Communication: A vacuum of awareness and understanding is often filled by activities that are not aligned with the strategy.
- Successes: A lack of successes reduces the belief that the strategy will work and increases the chances that people will look for alternatives with seemingly higher payoffs.
- Decision-rights: Disillusionment and boredom can stem from a lack of empowerment to make decisions.
- Breaks: Focus, particularly from driving a team too hard without enough time to recharge. This is often due to resources being deployed in ways that aren’t coherent with the strategy.
- Enjoyment: People will soon find new things to do if they don’t feel their jobs are enjoyable, fulfilling, or stretching them.
Apply a mindset of curiosity rather than admonishment as you talk to your employees about distractions. This will encourage them to feel psychologically safe enough to share what’s going on. You might say:
I noticed you’re interested in […] or spending time doing […]. I’m curious to understand what has caught your attention. What are you enjoying most about it? How do you think this will improve our strategy? I’d like us to work out together whether it’s worth pursuing further or stepping away from.
Invite people to share where they think the strategy is weak, incomplete, or unclear. For example, in the first few weeks of his tenure, a new CEO of a media company assembled a team to poke holes in the strategy after he realized there was insufficient focus on the priorities, starting with the leadership team. The team consulted a wide range of people in the organization before recommending a number of immediate changes to the strategy, including a reevaluation of customer needs.
Strengthen your strategy.
Once you have a sense of what distractions you’re dealing with and what might be causing them, resist the inclination to gain tighter control of your employees’ work and focus instead on making your strategy stronger.
Reignite your purpose and refresh your strategy.
Distractions are often a sign that employees have lost sight of what the strategy is for. Create opportunities for them to hear from the customers or citizens your company is there to serve, reigniting a sense of purpose. Describe the reasons for change, calling out problems candidly while also emphasizing the opportunities ahead. Communicate the strategy widely and clearly, leaving no room for ambiguity.
Incorporate employees’ feedback on the strategy to improve its clarity and coherence. Remove any gaps, inconsistencies, or weaknesses that reduce people’s belief in it. Typically this involves:
- Reexamining the biggest challenges you’re looking to address
- Reducing the number of priorities
- Sharpening your focus on customer needs
- Clarifying competitor differentiation
- Refreshing the leadership team
- Building capabilities and cultures that better support the strategy
As you do this, strengthen incentives so people can see a direct connection between their contribution and the strategic goals. Celebrate successes loudly and consistently to reinforce what’s “on message.”
Darren Childs, the former CEO of UKTV, used to hold quarterly strategic updates for the whole company in which he would say, “If you’re not working on something that fits with one of our strategic priorities, stop it immediately.” This shocked people into to rethinking what they were working on and reassessing their contribution to the strategy.
Fire up the innovation engine.
Distractions can often be a sign that too much effort is being expended in managing the core business. This leaves little room for efficiency (improving process), sustaining (extending into new markets), and transformational innovation (new business models).
To address this, develop a more systematic approach through designing, testing, and scaling new ideas. Deploy more capital to exploration activities that can become future sources of growth. Encourage people to use a growth mindset — pursuing new ways to deliver the strategy as part of continual reinvention. That way, attention and energy that could be diverted into distractions is channeled more productively.
Leadership teams should drive this by spending 20 to 40% of their time on innovation activities. Executives should spend more time “out of the building” with customers and increase the mobility of people from within and outside the organization to develop and share new ideas and mitigate confirmation bias and groupthink.
Be systematic about interpreting signals.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, especially in a data-rich organization in a fast-moving environment. A new insight or event can lead to distraction as you figure out what it means and what to do about it.
Establish a clear, structured framework to collate, analyze, and act on new intelligence, and include leading indicators and foresight into future scenarios. This relates to external developments (with customers, competitors, suppliers, investors, or regulators) that indicate the possibility of a change in your competitive advantage. The same goes for intra-organization dynamics that indicate a change in employees’ cohesion and commitment.
The leadership team should share their perspective on critical developments with the rest of the organization to mitigate the risk of distractions. They should also empower their business units to monitor the critical signals, indicators, and KPIs that are most relevant to them and act accordingly in line with the strategy — highlighting material shifts that require a reevaluation of the strategy for their group or the wider organization.
Embed the strategy in daily practices.
Distractions arise from a disconnect between individuals and the strategy when they don’t get it or feel it. To rebuild this connection, invite people to reflect on their individual sense of purpose. This should involve crafting their role in a way that makes a better contribution to the strategy — for example, by changing their focus or giving them greater decision-making responsibilities.
Next, embed more discipline into daily routines. Structure meetings around strategic priorities. Build networks of accountability partners — within teams, with peers, and in wider networks — who can listen, advise, and help. Design schedules to allow sufficient time for breaks so you can peak at the times that suit your rhythms.
Nitin Govila, the chief sales & marketing officer and SVP of Serge Ferrari, keeps a notebook at hand to jot down ideas that come to mind and develops frameworks to assess the potential of these ideas. Sonia Brown, a VP at Visa, dedicates specific time to progressing her strategic thinking, recognizing that her schedule across multiple time zones is full of client and people meetings otherwise. She also consults networks of people who care about her success and don’t have a vested interest.
. . .
An openness to experimenting, learning, and adapting is an essential characteristic of an effective strategy process. However, it’s easy to get distracted by both external and internal developments and opportunities. Avoid the temptation to micromanage and assert control to mitigate this risk. Instead, strengthen your strategic intent, improve individuals’ connections with the strategy, and encourage better discipline, channeling energies into more productive innovation activities.
