The Missing Mid-Layer

It’s strategic planning season right now, and I recently sat in on a daylong Zoom session with a client, listening as leaders plotted their organization’s course for 2021. They focused on reviewing 2020 initiatives, assessing where they stood heading into 2021, and discussing the proper metrics for measuring success.
 
Sometime around mid-afternoon, as one of several discussion groups was reporting the highlights of a breakout conversation, an executive asked what I often think of as the critical question in these sessions: “How do all these initiatives we’re spending so much time on relate to our company values?”
 
In the midst of my note-taking, I excitedly underlined the comment, circled it, and drew asterisks — **** !!!!! **** !!!!!
 
What can I say? I get fired up when people arrive at this place on their own. When leaders arrive at a natural understanding of what I think of as “The Missing Mid-Layer”— that’s when things get real in terms of “setting the boat.”
 
Here’s a metaphor for what I’m talking about: Think of the corporate values and mission that the woman from my client cited in her question. This matrix of Mission-Values-Purpose (MVP) is defined and set at the board and upper executive level and is intended to serve as the core of what the business is about. The MVP is the bones of the organization, the frame on which everything else hangs.
 
All the tasks and operational initiatives that were under review and discussion that day were day-to-day operations. The organization’s muscles were firing (sometimes to great effect, sometimes less so) on a daily basis to execute this stuff.
 
But as the executive noted, there was something missing: What connects the bones of the organization to the muscles that put those bones in motion and create change? What happens when that connection is weak, ineffective, or damaged?
 
In our bodies, muscles are connected to bone by tendons; bones are connected to one another via ligaments. Knit together by this intricate connective system (and under the electrochemical guidance of the nervous system), our bodies are marvelous machines, capable both of amazing feats of athleticism and of everyday behaviors and motions (walking, sitting down) that are themselves small miracles of coordination.
 
Leaders instinctively get this; one client loved telling his team that the whole point of our quarterly goals cadence (we were using the Objectives & Key Results methodology) was to “build the goal-setting muscle.” He recognized that, like a stretching or physical training program, getting better at goal setting was a process with cumulative, iterative benefits.
 
At CXN, we tap into the central nervous system of organizations, creating a tailored process that builds, stretches, and strengthens the tendons and ligaments that translate the core values in the bones of your business into real-world action.

To learn more about our approach to goal setting, please read this page of our website and download our white paper on “The Three Keys to Successful Goal Setting.”