I was with our Latin America director last week. He and his team have a strategy. So now what?

One of the biggest reasons for having a strategy is so that the staff working with you know what to do every day. They are only going to know the new strategy if it is communicated to them.

The guys on Madison Avenue (the center of the US advertising industry) know that someone has to receive a message 7 times before they internalize it. If it takes 6 repetitions to remember what brand of toothpaste to buy, then it will take at least that for someone to understand the strategy of your organization so that all their decisions are based upon it.

The strategy can be communicated in the following ways at different times:

• E-mails
• References to the strategy in EVERY presentation
• Video summary on YouTube / Vimeo with link distributed to all staff
• Articles in in-house newsletters
• Roadshow with live presentations
• Measurement of a key metric of the strategy
• Cascading e-mail, with group discussions at all levels
• Incentives / competitions
• Internal social media articles and discussions

This communication will need to come from different people so that the staff recognizes that it is not just your hobby horse. The strategy can be communicated by:

• the CEO
• Department / Division heads
• Success stories from the field staff
• Peer groups on internal message boards / social media sites

One of the best books that I have read on the importance of this subject is Simple Church. Check it out.