How to Communicate Your Company’s Strategy Effectively  
大卫·兰斯菲尔德（David Lancefield）| 文    

Most people can’t recall the strategy of the organization they work for. Even the executives and managers responsible for strategy struggle, with one study reporting that only 28% of them could list three strategic priorities.

大多数人都不记得自己公司的战略，即使是负责战略的高层和管理者也很难记住。一项研究报告称，只有28%的高管能列出三个战略重点。

It’s not surprising. Many organizations don’t have a strategy. The few that do find it hard to communicate effectively, as it requires engaging with a wide range of stakeholders in different situations. They find it easier and less risky to issue lofty purpose statements, describe big goals, launch initiatives, or publish fixed plans instead.

这并不奇怪。许多公司都没有战略。少数有战略的公司会发现很难有效沟通战略，因为这需要在不同情况下与广泛的利益相关者接触。与之相比，他们发现发表崇高的公司宣言、描述宏大目标、发起倡议或发布固定计划更为容易，风险也更小。

Communicating strategy clearly increases the chances of an organization “winning” by helping people decide where to focus their attention, energy, resources, and capabilities. Unclear communication results in wasted effort from lack of alignment and confusion, which leads to inertia.

通过帮助人们决定将注意力、精力、资源和能力集中在哪里，战略沟通显然可以增加组织“获胜”的机会。不清晰的沟通会因为缺乏一致性和不明确而白费力气，从而导致惰性。

If you’re embarking on communicating your organization’s strategy, here are five ways to do it clearly.

如果你正在着手沟通公司的战略，下面五种方法和具体措施可以让你做到明确沟通。

Communicate comprehensively

多维度沟通

Communications sometimes focus on one aspect of strategy to the detriment of others. For example, they lay out how to beat the competition but forget to address how best to serve customers. Or they describe an exciting vision but leave out important details of how the organization will deliver on it. They outline the trends, dynamics, and disruptions but fail to clearly articulate the choices they’ve made to address them.

沟通有时会只关注了战略的一个方面而牺牲了其他方面。例如，阐述了如何击败竞争对手，却忘了如何最好地服务客户。或者描述了一个激动人心的愿景，但遗漏了实现它的重要细节。概述了趋势、动态和干扰因素，但没能清楚地阐明为解决这些问题而做的选择。

The same goes for the audience. Executives prioritize communicating with employees and investors and then forget to engage with wider stakeholders, such as regulators or community groups, until they raise questions or objections.

受众也一样。高管会优先考虑与员工和投资者沟通，然后忘记了与更广泛的利益相关者沟通，比如监管机构或社区团体，直到他们提出了问题或反对意见。

To combat this narrow focus, a chief of staff I worked with developed a central repository of answers to frequently asked questions about her company’s strategy and highlighted the most important ones for each stakeholder group. This better prepared her to customize the message for the audience, which increased the efficacy of the communications. She also invited colleagues to contribute. That improved not just the quality of the answers, but also the consistency of messages across the organization, as those contributors felt a greater sense of ownership.

为了克服这种狭隘的关注，和我一起工作的一位办公室主任开发了一个中央资料库，里面有关于组织战略的常见问题的回答，并列出了对每个利益相关者群体而言最重要的问题。这让她可以更好地为受众定制信息做好准备，从而提高了沟通效率。她还邀请了同事们贡献答案，不仅提高了回答质量，还提高了整个组织信息的一致性，因为那些贡献者有了更强的主人翁意识。

To communicate strategy comprehensively, you’ll need to:

为了全面地传达战略，你需要：

• Visualize your ambition. To create intrigue, spark imagination, and build excitement in a better future, focus attention on the opportunities and possibilities ahead. ( “At our best we will become…”)
• 将雄伟愿景可视化。为了激发好奇心和想象力，调动对美好未来的兴奋感，可以把注意力集中在未来的机会和可能性上。(“最好的情况下，我们将成为……”)

• Describe the contribution you want to make. Articulate the impact of the strategy on customers, wider stakeholders (e.g., citizens), and systems (e.g., the environment). (“We will make a significant contribution to our shareholders and the society we operate in by…”)
• 描述你想做出的贡献。明确战略对客户、更广泛的利益相关者(如公民)和系统(如环境)的影响。(“我们将通过……为我们的股东和社会做出重大贡献。”)

• Challenge the status quo. Encourage people to see the merits in trying a new path, overcoming personal and organizational inertia. (“We’re not serving our customers as best we can because…”)
• 挑战现状。鼓励人们看到尝试新方式的好处，克服个人和组织惰性。(“我们没有尽最大努力为我们的客户提供服务，是因为……”)

• Instill belief in the organization. Signal confidence in the organization’s ability to get there while acknowledging there will be some changes. (“We’ve shown what we’re capable of before when we’ve applied the right mindset…”)
• 在组织中灌输信念。承认将会发生一些变化的同时，对组织实现目标的能力表现出信心。(“运用正确的思维方式时，我们展示了有能力……”)

• Focus attention on what matters. Give people the opportunity to make the decisions they’re most capable of making about where to focus their time in line with the strategy — a process author Roger Martin calls “strategic choice chartering.” (“In my business area, we’ve chosen to focus on serving [x] customers in [these geographies] because [y] and we’ll win by being the best at [z]. The next choice is how and where to…”)
• 把注意力集中在重要的事情上。让人们有机会做出他们最有能力做出的决定，即把时间集中在符合战略的地方——流程作者罗杰·马丁(Roger Martin)称之为“战略选择章程”（strategic choice chartering）。(“在我的业务领域，我们选择专注于为某地区的某客户服务，因为……通过在……方面做得最好，我们将赢得胜利。下一个选择是如何以及在哪里……”)

• Outline what will change. Encourage people to start making changes to the way they work. (“To deliver on the strategy, we’ll need to invest in these capabilities, deploy resources in new areas, and change the way we work.”)
• 列出会改变的内容。鼓励人们开始改变他们的工作方式。(“为了实现这一战略，我们需要关注提升这些能力，在新领域部署资源，并改变我们的工作方式。”)

• Set out the metrics. Clarify the behaviors, activities, and outcomes that are central to the strategy and assign metrics to them. (“We will measure our success in delivering on this strategy by the following metrics at the organizational and individual levels.”)
• 设定标准。明确对战略至关重要的行为、活动和结果，并明确衡量标准。(“我们将在组织和个人层面通过以下指标衡量我们在实施这一战略方面的成功。”)

• Explain the thinking, logic, and evidence that supports the choices. Build credibility and confidence in the ambition, choices, and investments. (“This strategy is based on a number of important data points and assumptions.”)
• 解释背后的思路、逻辑和证据。在雄心、选择和投资中建立可信度和信心。(“这一战略是基于一些重要的数据点和假设。”)

• Describe the process. Instill confidence in the way you’ve developed the strategy. (“We developed this strategy in open dialogue throughout the process, inviting ideas and suggestions.”)
• 描述过程。灌输对你制定战略的方式的信心。(“我们在整个过程中通过公开对话的方式制定了这一战略，征求了各方意见和建议。”)

In most cases it’s not necessary to do this in one go. The trick is to combine the right message with the audience using the most effective medium, listening attentively to the responses and contributions and refining the communication (if not aspects of the strategy) as required; it’s certainly not a fixed construct.

大多数情况下，没必要一气呵成。诀窍在于利用最有效的媒介将正确的信息与受众结合起来，认真倾听他们的反应和贡献，并根据需要完善沟通；这当然不是一个固定的结构。

Make it personal

个性化沟通

Communications often paint a corporate picture of the world that doesn’t actually convey what’s expected of the audience — or how it benefits them.

沟通往往可以描绘出一幅企业蓝图，但实际上并没有传达出对受众的期望——或如何使他们受益。

Steve, a CEO I came to work with, walked off stage feeling great after presenting the new strategy to his team. The rehearsals he did had paid off. He landed all the important points and effectively included personal anecdotes and humor. Or so he thought.

我共事过的一位CEO史蒂夫，一次在向团队介绍完新战略后自我感觉良好地走下了舞台。排练没有白费，他抓住了所有重点，有效地运用了个人趣事和幽默感。至少他是这么认为的。

As they shared their reactions with me, I could see that the audience members were less convinced: “That was some performance,” “It’s clear what the future looks like. But I have no idea what it means for me. What should I change? How will I change?,” “How will this strategy help my career?,” “The other executive committee members were nodding, but are they truly on board?”

然而观众与我分享反馈时，我却可以看出他们并不怎么买账。“那是在表演。”“未来很清晰，但我不知道这对我意味着什么。我应该做出那些改变？我将如何改变？”“这一战略会如何助力我的事业？”“其他高管都在点头，但他们真的赞同吗？”

Take four actions to avoid this scenario:

想要避免这一情况，可以采取四个措施：

• Show that you’re implementing the strategy yourself through the choices you make. Prioritize spending your time, attention, and energy on the activities that best enable the strategy. Talk through areas of confusion or disagreement in your team in order to build alignment and commitment. Reflect on how your decisions and words are consistent with the strategy.
• 通过切身选择，表明你正在亲身实践这个战略。优先把你的时间、注意力和精力放在最能实现战略的活动上。讨论团队中存在的困惑或分歧，以建立一致性和承诺。反思你的决定和话语是如何与战略保持一致的。

• Describe the new activities, capabilities, and behaviors that enable the strategy, and establish pilots to start rolling them out.
• 描述实现战略的新活动、能力和行为，并建立试验点，开始推广这些活动。

• Tackle nostalgia, fears, or frictions that might hold people back, such as, “We’ve tried this before and it didn’t work, so what’s different this time?” or “How can we improve our speed to market when we have to wade through so much bureaucracy?”
• 解决可能阻碍人们前进的怀旧情绪、恐惧感或摩擦。例如，“我们以前试过但行不通，这次会有什么不同呢？”或“不得不在如此多的官僚主义中艰难跋涉时，我们如何才能加快进入市场的速度？”

• Help people upskill — for example, through training programs (which should include teaching people about strategy, not just their functional skillsets), coaching, or mentoring.
• 帮助员工提升技能。例如通过培训计划或指导提升技能，应该包括向人们传授战略，而不仅是职能技能。

Match the message to the moment

匹配信息与时机

Communicating strategy often involves long, bombastic slide presentations or brief, bland statements online. By themselves, these rarely create the excitement, engagement, advocacy, or recall required to effect change.

沟通战略往往涉及冗长、夸夸其谈的幻灯片演示或简短、乏味的在线声明。这些做法本身很少能产生影响变革所需的兴奋、参与、倡导或回忆。

Instead, design your communication as a series of engaging and dynamic exercises — with an emphasis on brevity and clarity. This requires three steps:

相反，可以把沟通过程设计为一系列强调简洁清晰且有吸引力的动态练习。这需要三个步骤：

• Map out the critical or “imprintable” moments — including the people involved — where you want to communicate strategy. This could be an interview with a recruit, a pitch to investors, a board meeting, a townhall presentation, a team huddle, or a performance appraisal.
• 规划好期望传达战略的关键时刻，或“可以留下深刻印象”的时刻，及相关人员。可以是面试新员工、对投资者的推介、董事会会议、对全体员工的讲话、团建活动或绩效评估时。

• Decide what messages you want to emphasize. If you’re with a potential partner organization, you might want to focus on the ambition and opportunity ahead, whereas with a group of managers, you’ll want to articulate the choices and changes you’ve made and encourage them to make their own.
• 决定想强调的信息。如果对方是潜在的合作伙伴，你可以把重点放在未来的愿景和机会上；如果是面对管理者，则最好阐明做出的选择和改变，并鼓励他们做出自己的选择和改变。

• Select the tool or asset that best works for the people, moment, and message. For a one-on-conversation, you might use a two-minute (or even shorter) elevator pitch, or an anecdote about the organization’s advantage. In a larger group setting, a visualization that describes elements of the strategy, or a story that illustrates how the organization will overcome the challenges it faces, works well. In an email, you might use a one-paragraph summary of the strategy, along with some answers to frequently-asked questions, and a personal reflection on what it means to the you.
• 选择最适合受众、时机和信息的工具或资产。在一对一谈话中，你可以用两分钟甚至更短的电梯游说，或者讲一段关于公司优势的趣事。面对更多受众时，用视觉化的方式描述战略元素，或者用一个故事来说明组织将如何克服挑战，都会很有效。在电子邮件中，你可以用一段话来概括战略，回答一些常见问题，并就战略对你的意义进行个人反思。

As an example of online communication, telecommunications company BT uses a single visual on its website to connect purpose, ambition, values, and strategy. BP (British Petroleum) set out its strategic narrative in a well-written press release, while carmaker Renault presented its “Renaulation” plan in a highly visual, content-rich presentation.

在线交流的一个例子是英国电信集团(BT)在网站上使用视觉化方式连接了目标、雄心、价值观和战略。英国石油公司(BP)在精心撰写的新闻稿中阐述了战略，而雷诺汽车公司(Renault)则以高度视觉化、内容丰富的演示文稿介绍了“重振”计划。

Empower people through transparency

通过透明度赋能员工

The responsibility for communicating strategy is often restricted to a select few, based on two mistaken beliefs: Only the top team has responsibility for strategy and strategy is too complex for others to communicate. Information is also restricted based on two other mistaken beliefs: Too much detail will distract people and competitors will gain an advantage from knowing more about the strategy.

战略沟通的责任通常被限定在少数人身上，这是基于两个错误信念：只有高层团队才有责任制定战略，以及战略太过复杂，其他人无法传达。信息的限制还基于另外两个错误信念：细节过多会分散人们的注意力，而竞争对手会因为了解更多战略而获得优势。

This approach limits the opportunity for employees, partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders to contribute to, advocate for, and deliver on the strategy. They want to hear from people they work closely with — not just the top team — and to understand the full picture.

这种方法限制了员工、合作伙伴、供应商和其他利益相关者为战略做出贡献、倡导和实践战略的机会。他们希望听取与他们密切合作的人的意见，而不仅仅是高层团队的意见，并了解全局。

One CFO I worked with made a point to explain on calls and in meetings how what she and her team were doing contributed to the strategy. She also encouraged people involved in the development of strategy to play a prominent role in the program of communications and to act as advocates in their daily activities. This ranged from people who contributed ideas and perspectives in crowdsourcing events to those who played a central role in designing the strategy (including representatives from corporate development, sales, customer service, operations, and HR).

我共事过的一位CFO在电话和会面中强调了她和团队所做的事情对战略有何贡献。她还鼓励参与制定战略的人员在沟通计划中发挥重要作用，并在日常活动中充当倡导者。这些人包括在集体献策活动中贡献想法和观点的人，以及在战略设计中发挥核心作用的人，包括来自企业发展、销售、客户服务、运营和人力资源的代表。

Help people understand the strategy and make their own choices by:

以下方式可以帮助人们理解战略并做出自己的选择：

• Sharing as much of the strategy as possible, explaining the critical decisions, assumptions made, and uncertainties. Provide the assets and information in one place so people can select what they’re interested in.
• 尽可能多地分享战略，解释关键决策、做出的假设和不确定性。一站式提供资产和信息，方便人们选择他们感兴趣的东西。

• Describing how important decisions enable the strategy, such as a new investment, closure, restructure, or partnership.
• 描述重要决策，如新的投资、结束、重组或伙伴关系等会如何助力实现战略。

• Communicating progress honestly. Share updates on what’s working and what’s challenging and invite people to contribute ideas.
• 坦诚交流进展。分享并更新有效的措施与挑战，邀请大家提出想法。

• Holding back detail wisely. Only restrict information if it has the potential to overwhelm or confuse people or undermine commercial activity (e.g., a potential acquisition or new venture).
• 明智地保留细节。只有在信息有可能过多、令人困惑，或会破坏商业活动（例如潜在的收购或新的风险投资）时，才限制信息。

• Creating open channels. Make it easy for people to share ideas, raise challenges, and ask questions.
• 创建开放的渠道。让人们容易分享想法、提出挑战和问题。

Repeat, listen, and refresh

重复，倾听，再刷新

After the launch of a strategy, life often goes back to “normal” as people revert to old habits, practices, and routines — especially in many large, traditional companies. Communications fade away. Apart from the wasted effort, it leaves the organization less resilient and more susceptible to disruption.

一项战略启动后，随着人们恢复到之前的习惯、做法和惯例，生活往往会回归“正常”，特别是在许多大型传统公司中。沟通逐渐消失。除了浪费精力，它还会减少组织韧性，让组织更容易受到破坏。

Strategy needs to evolve in a world that is more volatile and uncertain than before. Its communication, therefore, needs to be both systematic and flexible. This requires you to:

在一个更为动荡和不确定的世界中，战略需要不断发展。因此战略的沟通要系统又灵活。这就要求：

• Map out clear sequences of communications with different stakeholder groups in different moments to ensure clarity and consistency of messages. Research suggests it takes about two months to embed a new habit, even with the best communications and incentives — so this needs to be a sustained effort and include some repetition. You’ll know it’s resonating when stakeholders start to use the same language, and, most importantly, start making their own choices about where to focus and how to work differently.
• 在不同时间与不同利益相关者群体制定明确的沟通顺序，确保信息的明确性和一致性。研究表明，即使有最好的沟通和激励措施，养成一种新习惯也需要两个月的时间，所以这需要持续的努力，包括一些重复。当利益相关者开始使用同样的语言，并且最重要的是，开始自己选择关注的重点以及如何以不同方式工作时，你就会知道沟通正在产生共鸣。

• Ask questions to encourage participation and overcome obstacles. Think, “What can we do to accelerate the changes?” or “What can we remove to make our lives easier?” Listen carefully to the answers.
• 提出问题以鼓励参与并克服障碍。想一想“我们可以采取哪些措施来加速改变？”或 “哪些减法可以让我们的生活更容易？”并仔细聆听答案。

• Monitor weak signals of change within and outside the organization that should change the content and nature of communication (let alone the strategy). For example, if there’s a change in consumer sentiment or aggressive competitor activity, communications should call out the resilience of the strategy (or the reasons for changes).
• 追踪组织内外变化的微弱信号，这些变化会改变沟通的内容和性质，更不用说战略。例如消费者的情绪变化，或竞争对手的激进行为发生改变，沟通就应该强调战略韧性或变化原因。

• Surface and highlight success stories to reinforce the messages, maintain interest, and build commitment.
• 突显并强调成功案例来强化信息，保持兴趣，并塑造承诺。

For too long, communicating strategy has been an afterthought. Executives have shared long, bombastic documents or withheld critical information and expected people to just “get it.” And it hasn’t worked. Greater external uncertainty, collaboration, employee anxiety, and organizational openness demands a change of approach. These five actions will improve the clarity and quality of communication, enabling people to make a more substantive and meaningful contribution to the strategy.

长久以来战略沟通都是事后诸葛。高管们或分享冗长又夸大其词的文件，或隐瞒了关键信息，还希望人们能“懂”。但这并不奏效。更大的外部不确定性、协作、员工焦虑和组织开放性都在要求改变沟通方法。上面五项行动将提高沟通的清晰度和质量，使人们能够对战略作出更实质和有意义的贡献。

关键词：战略

大卫·兰斯菲尔德是领导者的催化剂、战略师和教练。他为40多位CEO和数百名高管提供过建议，是Strategy&的高级合伙人，也是伦敦商学院的客座讲师。 

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