Which Way?

Modern businesses invest time and expertise in shaping future strategies. Many go on to invest effort in communicating the chosen direction to employees. But often, when you talk to an individual staff member, team or department, you find they’re unaware of the strategy and clueless as to how they can help the organisation achieve it. There’s a missing connection somewhere.

In 1865, Lewis Carroll published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice navigates a puzzling journey, meeting new characters and unfamiliar situations. People read this as an analogy for growing up. At one point, at a place in the forest where the path divides, Alice consults the Cheshire Cat:

Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

Alice: “I don't much care where.”

Cheshire Cat: “Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.”

The problem is that Alice is not aware of the purpose of her journey, so she’s not emotionally invested in the outcome. It’s the same in businesses where employee engagement is low. People turn up to do their daily work but don’t much care about the broader outcome.

Some say that this is a failure of communication, and it is. But we can be more specific. The real failure lies in mistaking information for persuasion. Leaders and managers all know they should inform their staff when change is in the air. But don’t realise that information on its own will rarely produce the response they desire.

A decade ago, commercial advertising was genuinely persuasive. Nearly two centuries’ experience had produced a key learning: you cannot persuade someone you do not understand. But modern advertising is largely memetic; a process of transferring short messages from person to person without any pause for interpretation. So, it’s far less memorable or persuasive.

In employee communication, we face a similar problem. We try to convey our strategy in complicated corporate language that doesn't make sense to people who haven’t been part of the prior discussion. True, an employee might take a passing interest in a vision statement. She would probably focus more on a mission statement, particularly one linked to her KPIs. But when it comes to company values, she’s often a bit lost.  How should she use them to make the right choices in her daily work?

Alice concludes her conversation with the Cheshire Cat by saying it probably doesn’t matter which way she goes as long as she gets somewhere. The Cat replies: “Oh, you're sure to do that if only you walk long enough.”

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