Page 66 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

56 HBR Leader’s Handbook

Furthermore, failing to take into account the viewpoints of others in
your organization or immediate team means you’ll be taking all that work
on yourself—and usually not for the better. As Charlie Brown, founder

of the community design firm Context Partners, told us: “When I first
started my company, I felt the CEO job was to provide all the answers. I

kept floundering until some employees and clients finally told me: ‘[Your
company] will do much better if you stop trying to do it all yourself. The
strategy needs to leverage a wider network of other people.’ I’ve now
made that the rule for how we operate.”

small central team that then involves other contributors periodically as
needed. The team ultimately led by Rotenberg and Rubenstein was a core
of children’s media and technical experts from different PBS units, but its
members regularly met and shaped the project with input from other lead-
ers and key staff from member stations across the system. (See the box
“Don’t go it alone.”)
As your team starts to work, identify the final products your effort
must produce and for whom: Will it be a written plan, a presentation for
your boss, or an executive-style memo for your CEO? Will it include (as
such things normally do) specific goals and objectives, a fit with a vision,
analyses, a rationale for the initiative, a financial model, competitive anal-
yses, an assessment of risks and rewards, and so on?
Give some initial thought to how you will communicate the final strat-
egy and extend it to the broader organization. Involving as many stake-
holders as possible in the process—including frontline employees—will
smooth the way for greater acceptance. For those not actively involved,
good communication will be particularly necessary. At PBS, Kerger noted
that a major success of the PBS KIDS 24/7 strategy was how broadly and
continuously the team had built participation and enthusiasm across mul-
tiple units of the organization.