Strategy, purpose and culture: Is your triangle broken?
I can’t stop thinking about this article I shared on LinkedIn recently from HBR: Does Your Company’s Culture Reinforce Its Strategy and Purpose? It positions purpose (the north star and inspiration for talent), strategy (the plan to achieve success) and culture (what talent experiences) as a triangle. If one side of the triangle changes, the other two sides must also change or the triangle collapses. It even states the obvious: a communication plan can’t fix a broken triangle.
The importance of the red thread narrative
The challenge lately for professional communicators (communicators with a capital C, as I like to say) is that communications is currently a hot topic, a business priority and a leadership quality. This is good for capital C communicators, of course. But because everyone must communicate all day, every day, too many people (communicators with a lower case c) think they know what good communication looks like. This is not as good for you if you’re a communicator with a capital C, as—in my experience—what most people really know is what bad communication looks like.