Test the strategy
As the strategy begins to come together into a tangible form, you need your people even more. Reynolds prefers to take his management team and meet for a couple days to, as he says, take the strategy and “tear it apart.”
“Once you determine what that strategy is, you need to go out and test it,” Reynolds says. “I don’t like to say you sell it through because you don’t want to force it through. It has to be right. People have to believe in it or else it’s going to be very difficult for people to buy in. If they don’t buy in, it’s going to be very difficult to implement and execute.”
Be blunt and ask people if they think the strategy you are looking at makes sense.
“Can we make this work?” Reynolds says. “Will it work within our industry? Do we have the tools to make it happen? Do we have the people to make it happen? Do we have the finances to go forward doing it? You have to test every department. You have to take the strategy and see how every department fits into the strategy and then make sure it’s going to take the company in the right direction.”
By asking these questions and initiating these conversations, you’re demonstrating trust to your people that you believe their feedback is valuable to the process.
“We challenged each other regularly on this program,” Reynolds says. “You have to allow people to challenge you. You’re one individual, and one individual doesn’t have all the answers. You have to trust the people you have.”
If you’ve worked with your team from the beginning, you shouldn’t have a lot of divisiveness in the process. But it still occurs from time to time, and you need to hear it out.
“But if they’re not strong enough opinions or they’re not fact-based opinions where they can sway the group, I would expect them to get on board and not block the process,” Reynolds says. “Sometimes they do sway the group and we make changes.”
Reynolds recalled a situation with the logistics strategy that wasn’t working like it was expected to after it was implemented.
“If you’re not getting the results, you have to dig in and say, ‘Why aren’t we getting the results?’” Reynolds says. “Where is the flaw here? What isn’t happening? Why isn’t this going the right way? You need to be honest with yourself and ask questions and get input and see what their feelings are.”
If you don’t promote an air of openness, then concerns, such as those that arose with Graybar’s logistics strategy, will never come to light.
You can’t be afraid of confrontation and conflict in helping you get to a strategy that works for everybody.
“We always have challenges in there,” Reynolds says. “Some will feel that makes sense. Others won’t. So you sit there and you kind of battle through it until you come to a decision. Then you start implementing based on the decisions you made.”
There is another scenario that can occur with objections. While they may never be heard, the objections may instead fester with people who hold a grudge that they never had a chance to express how they felt.
“You need to communicate not only to those who are in charge of implementing the strategy, but to those who it’s going to impact,” Reynolds says. “They can fight it and never allow it to happen if they’re not included or at least have an understanding of where the company is going. You have to explain what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and here’s why it makes sense. Once they buy in and understand it, then they move forward with it.”
