A Quick Guide on How to ‘Talk Strategically’

Many in business and most in talent management fail to realize that as soon as you open your mouth, it s immediately obvious to almost all leaders and executives whether you are strategic and know the business. If you have ever been a CEO or senior executive (as I have), you already know that strategic individuals use a completely different language than the tactical doers who populate the lower levels of the organization. If you are satisfied with being a tactical person, that s okay, but if you expect to get promoted and to quickly take a leadership position in management, at some point you have to learn how to think and talk strategically. Talking strategically means using language from each of the seven strategic business dialects. These dialects or components of strategic speech can be labeled as Dollars to show impact Corporate goals focused Knowing with data Building a competitive advantage Being forward-looking Being customer focused Emphasizing innovation I will highlight the focus of each of these dialects, as well as the key strategic words to use under each of them in order to come across as strategic. The Language of Business Is Dollars and Numbers The first and most important major dialect of the strategic language involves the use of the language of business, which is the use of dollars and numbers to demonstrate business impact. The use of dollars and numbers allows you to come across as strategic in your writings and conversations, even if you don t actually yet hold a strategic position. If you ve ever been in meetings with the corporate executive team or even seen the minutes of these meetings, you would already know that dollars and numbers that show business impact are included in almost every element of their conversations. For example, a typical recruiter might say that their recruiting efforts are going well, where a strategic recruiter would have quantified their results and showed their business impact by instead saying that recruiting efforts are

17 percent ahead of last year and that improvement has resulted in an increase in corporate revenues of $7.2 million. This dialect clearly uses dollars and numbers to quantify the business impact of whatever s being discussed. This Dialect Focuses on Corporate Goals Strategic individuals are laser focused on meeting corporate goals, and as a result, they will pay little attention to any topic that doesn t relate directly to those corporate goals. Typical corporate strategic goals usually include increasing revenue and profit, building a competitive advantage, increasing market share, shareholder value, increasing productivity, satisfying the customer, and producing innovative products and services. There are no HR problems only strategic problems that occur when strategic goals are not being met as a result of the wrong actions in a functional area like talent management. So if you want to come across as strategic, you need to directly connect every functional action to how it will increase the firm s chances of reaching a specific corporate goal. For example, our corporate revenue goal is down 2 percent because delays in hiring and filling revenue-generating jobs are directly reducing revenues by $1.2 million each month. By the way, only amateurs use the term aligned with strategic goals, because alignment is almost impossible to measure. The more appropriate phrase is directly increasing the probability of meeting that goal. So the strategic language lesson to be learned is that being strategic requires you to relate every functional problem and opportunity directly and unambiguously to one or more of your firm s corporate goals and the problems that most directly impact those goals are given the highest priority. This Dialect Focuses on Using Data So That You Know This third business dialect requires you to know the right answer based on data and evidence. The language of tactical individuals includes a good number of phrases like I think, I feel, I believe, I assume, all of which clearly allude to the fact that you don t absolutely know the answer. However, because strategic actions have to be right the first time because they require such large investments and lengthy time to implement, you can t reveal with your language the fact that you are not a true expert and that there are some things that you are unsure of. So when you are trying to appear strategic, not only must you use the words I know, but you must immediately follow that phrase with numerical data that proves that your solution or answer is both correct and supported by data. For example, I know that the

22 percent turnover rate in the sales department that is hurting our corporate sales goal by 4 percent is caused by salespeople quitting as a result of our eliminating corporate vehicles for salespeople, and this fact was revealed during our post-exit interviews. The key lesson to be learned is that strategic people do very little speculating or guessing; instead, they are experts who use data so that they actually know and can defend the best answer or solution. This Fourth Dialect Focuses on Building a Competitive Advantage Being strategic means that you don t operate in isolation; instead, you continually compare what you do and your results directly to what your firm s competitors do. Because providing a competitive advantage is so important, any strategic conversation must include how the recommended action will give us a competitive advantage and a measurable lead over other firms. Using the competitive advantage dialect, you would demonstrate how an action or program would produce superior results, more effective processes, and superior product and service features than those at the competitor firms. A strategic conversation covering a new idea, product, or solution would also naturally include the likely actions that the competitor firms would take in order to counter our new solution. An example of a strategic phrase might include: we will be the first to introduce a mobile platform job application process, which is so advanced that it will give us a competitive advantage in recruiting

22 percent more salespeople for at least the next two years. This Fifth Dialect Covers Being Future Focused Most employees are focused almost 100 percent on today s problems, while a strategic person is forward-looking and tries to forecast or predict upcoming problems and opportunities. So if you want to come across as strategic in your conversations, supplement your discussion of current problems with forecasts and predictions about upcoming issues. Being forward-looking allows you to identify problems early before they get out of hand, and this early warning allows you to mitigate any potential damage. Strategic language under the future-focused dialect might include: recruiting in the sales department will negatively impact corporate sales by four percent over the next quarter, but if action is not taken, the impact will double to eight percent within six months. Obviously strategic people also prefer predictive analytics over historical last year s metrics. This Sixth Dialect Covers Being Customer Focused Being customer centric is a key component of being strategic because the firm can t reach its strategic goals without understanding and satisfying its external customers. However, the customer-centric approach is so powerful that executives expect it to be used when you are dealing with internal customers. This approach requires employees (and especially those in overhead service functions) to treat the managers and employees who they serve the same way as they would treat external customers. So just like in the customer relatio