Communicate the vision
Although you might have a strong vision on paper, it’s not truly developed until it is clearly communicated to your employees and is being lived.
“There’s no silver bullet,” Stack says. “You need to do a number of things. You need to get out and talk. You need to give the ability to communicate through a Web-based communication function. You need to be able to get your message out with the people who are running the particular business areas for you. And you need to get feedback.”
The first step in making sure your vision is going to reach all of your employees is to outline an effective chain of command for communication and present the same message from multiple avenues. For example, Dick’s uses an intranet site to supplement direct communication about what is happening throughout the business.
You need to state and repeat a clear and concise vision for employees, but just as important is your ability to rely on your team to get that message out.
“If you don’t have an effective management team, your vision will never grow to the heights that you hope it can, because one person or two people can only do so much,” Stack says. “To grow a business from two stores to 500 stores takes a lot of smart people to understand the vision to make that happen.”
You need to make sure the roles of your management team are clearly defined when it comes to communicating anything within the company, and you need to have the right people in each of those functions who can speak about the vision. At Dick’s, the message is communicated from top management to district managers, then to store managers before it gets to store associates. But the message can’t be lost as it’s funneled through the organization.
Stack says it’s fairly easy to tell who on the management team understands the vision, has bought in to it and can articulate it — because they’re engaged and participating in the business.
“They live that aspect of being out in the business, of wanting to communicate, of listening, getting feedback of what’s right and wrong out of our business,” Stack says.
Just because you’ve set a vision and you’ve asked for it to be passed through the organization doesn’t mean employees don’t need to hear it from you.
“You need to constantly be talking about what the vision is, what the goal of the business is. You have to constantly communicate that and then you have to represent that vision. You have to follow through; you can’t say one thing and do another. It’s very important for whoever is starting a business that you have a clear vision and you follow through on that vision. You never ask somebody to do something that you wouldn’t do yourself.”
Stack’s commitment to the vision is shown by his presence in the company’s stores. He spends about five or six days each month talking with associates and customers in Dick’s Sporting Goods stores.
As the leader of the company, you need to be visible. You need to verbally communicate the vision to your employees, you need to show them that you live the vision, and you need to use that time to ensure the right message is getting to those who directly work with your customers. Stack uses his time in the stores to accomplish each of those tasks.
While you’re casually speaking with employees and customers, listen to what they’re telling you. In their comments, is there a separation between your vision and how it’s being executed? Other aspects of the business Stack looks at to test whether the vision has been clearly communicated are the appearance of a store and its sales numbers.
“If sales aren’t what they should be at a particular store and other stores in that region are doing fine, then you know you’ve got somebody who may not be doing his or her job properly,” Stack says.
You need to take the time to ensure that something so valuable to your business — your vision — is really being communicated and lived. If not, you need to examine where the disconnect is occurring. It may, in fact, start with you.
“If you’re having a difficult time communicating your message to your employees, the problem is probably with you, not your employees, which means you need to find a different way to communicate,” Stack says. “One of the best ways to find a different way to communicate is to go ask them. You need to ask the associates that you’re working with and say, ‘All right, this doesn’t seem to be getting across. What am I missing? What do you need from me to do a better job? What do you need from me to understand better what we’re trying to do?’ If the message isn’t getting out there, you have to look inward, not outward.”
