Research from the Economist Intelligence Unit found that 90% of CEOs fail to meet goals. Why? In large part, misalignment. If you’re running a growing global company focused on profitability, scale and optimization, misalignment can have disastrous results. On average, 10% of a company’s spending is wasted due to misalignment.

Strategic alignment, on the other hand, propels business results.
‍

Alignment requires all parts of an organization to work together toward a common purpose. It’s the bridge between strategic initiatives (goals and  objectives) and cultural values (workplace practices and behaviours). It’s up to leaders to communicate strategic initiatives in a way that is clear, elicits trust, and each employee understands the importance of their role and feels engaged to act.

Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. 

A recent study, Why good strategies fail: Lessons for the C-suite, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, states a top barrier to successful enterprise execution is communication. Specifically, poor communication around the company strategy. 

Although CEOs are responsible for company strategy and stakeholder alignment, research from the Economist Intelligence Unit found that only 47 percent of respondents said the C-suite was involved in communicating strategy. However, according to a Forbes Insights report, 73 percent of executives say they must increase communication to improve strategy execution and employee buy-in.
‍

Hybrid Workforces Add Complexity to Communication

To secure strategic alignment across your stakeholders, intentional and consistent communication is essential.  For CEOs, that means knowing the right message to deliver to stakeholders -- at the right cadence.  That’s no easy task, especially when you add the complexity of a hybrid workforce. 

So how are the top 10% of CEOs communicating quickly and effectively to align and engage their dispersed workforce? Many, including ServiceRocket’s CEO, Rob Castenda, have turned to workstream communication platforms, like Workplace from Meta.

Tips from ServiceRocket’s Experience

For the past 5 years, Rob has used Workplace to communicate, manage and accelerate alignment across our globally dispersed and hybrid workforce. Here’s how:

Create Transparency and Build Trust

Transparent communication engenders trust, and that trust creates an environment in which people collaborate towards common goals and freely share ideas and knowledge. 

Internal events play a key role in CEO communications to kick off and maintain momentum to meet strategic goals. These Workplace features allow leaders to reach the right people, teams, departments or the whole company to create engaging, interactive events that reach everyone, virtually. ‍

Live Video: During team All Hands or company-wide meetings our CEO, Rob, uses Live Video to speak directly to Rocketeers, introduce company initiatives and explain the strategy behind them. Not only is it more engaging and accessible, employees state it feels more authentic.
‍

Live Polls: During Live Video broadcasts, CEOs can generate instant feedback on any topic using Live Polls. They can be created before and during the broadcast, include 2 to 4 answer choices, and there’s no limit to the number of polls that can be run during a single broadcast.
‍

‍

Q&A and Comments:  Encourage employees to ask questions or comment in real time during the broadcast.  Coworkers can upvote questions and CEOs can respond, and even address the employee by name. This helps remove any confusion or ambiguity.

‍
Stream Health tab: After the event, use this feature to see a summary of key analytics like video views, average watch time, engagement and more.
‍

Create and Track Stakeholder Alignment

Innovation starts with collaboration. In a hybrid workforce model, Workplace enables powerful cross-team conversations that unify and align teams as they work to execute company strategy.  These Workplace features also allow company leaders to easily track team direction and progress.
‍
Groups: Groups bring people together and encourage cross-team collaboration. They provide for in-depth, structured discussions and improve productivity by enabling  teams in different time zones to work asynchronously.  Share files, assign action items, like/comment, post videos and more.

‍

Chats:  When a Group with fewer than 250 people is created, Workplace automatically creates a matching Chat thread. These are perfect for time-sensitive conversations or to make instant decisions.
‍

Simplify Strategic Alignment

CEOs own strategic decisions and goal setting, but achieving those goals requires buy-in from every stakeholder. Each level of management must take appropriate ownership, develop measurable key results, establish deadlines and carefully track progress.  

The clear bottom-line benefits of strategic alignment should compel every CEO to invest in a workstream communication platform.  Workplace from Meta makes it easy for company leaders to communicate effectively, engage employees, create strategic alignment and meet goals with agility - even with a dispersed, hybrid workforce.