Validity

This dimension of content is about creating a viable and rational strategy. Most executives believe that they win commitment to a strategy simply by taking the time to ensure it is the "right" strategy. They will often convene cross-functional teams for months to design and map out details at the most granular of levels. Sometimes they'll bring in outside experts - consultants, business school professors or others -- to make sure the strategy is valid.

Clarity

Employees don't buy into ideas they don't understand. As a result, many executives believe they must go to painstaking lengths to ensure their communication about the strategy is crystal clear and frequent. (How many times have you heard the nostrum of "communicate, communicate, communicate"?) Thus, they often hire communications consultants or tap internal PR people to write the strategy in prose everyone will understand.

Credibility and Sincerity

People won't willingly follow when they believe their leaders are not open and honest about what is going on. Employees who distrust their superiors will doubt just about everything their bosses say about the strategy: the need for it, its impact and so on. When leaders are straightforward and forthright, even about the most sensitive of topics such as layoffs and significant organizational changes, they will earn the trust of their people. Those people will then invest themselves in the vision and strategy.

Courage

If managers and workers believe leaders lack the courage to follow through on the strategy, they won't commit either.

At the senior level, the leadership team may worry that the CEO will not be open to hearing the truth (especially bad news), having tough conversations or making difficult decisions that are required for the strategy to work - e.g., getting rid of unprofitable product lines, removing uncooperative or incompetent senior or middle managers, or addressing toxic corporate politics.

Middle managers are likely to fear that senior leaders will not "walk the talk." They may worry their bosses will pay lip service to the strategic initiative and not be punished for it because of internal politics and a culture that doesn't hold people accountable. That makes it unsafe for employees to raise difficult issues - the real stuff that challenges the politics, norms and organizational status quo.

Competence

Even if employees believe their leaders are sincere and courageous, if those same leaders don't appear competent, employees won't follow them. Employees will privately harbor doubts that their well-intentioned leaders will succeed. Leaders must be seen as capable of executing a new strategy.

Middle managers will privately question the directions they are given from above and blame breakdowns and inefficiencies on their bosses' incompetence. In turn, employees will spend significant energy gossiping and complaining about ineffective leadership. All of this will produce a sense of victimization, which will only further increase the organizational frustration and ineffectiveness in pursuing the new strategy.

Concern

No matter how credible, competent and courageous the leader is, if his employees do not think he cares about them, they won't go all out to implement the new strategy. Why should they? While the new strategy might make the company better off, it might make them worse off.

Concerns about a new initiative will play out differently at each organizational layer. Senior leaders will want to know that it will improve - not worsen - their status and opportunities for advancement. Those who see diminished opportunities will secretly withdraw or go through the motions, even if they pretend otherwise.

Middle managers will often retreat because they feel their input is not sought by their bosses - that they are merely cogs in a machine, a means to an end.

We also find that leaders and managers assume that what attracts them to a new strategy - higher revenue, lower costs, increases in the company's stock price, and so on - is also coveted by the rank and file. This is far from the truth. Employees want to feel involved, respected and valued for their contributions - beyond just financially.