Everyday translation of strategy

This week, I had a wonderful coffee conversation with two seasoned consultants, and it did not take long before we landed right in the middle of a familiar phenomenon: strategies that never become anything. Strategies that live in beautiful presentations, but not in the reality employees face every single day.

We ended up calling it the missing everyday translation of strategy.

It sounds practical. It doesn't sound glamorous. But that is precisely the point. A strategy that cannot be felt in everyday work is not really a strategy. It is decoration. Something you bring out for board meetings and special occasions, but not something that changes behaviour on a Monday morning.

From elegant purpose statements to actual meaning

One example I remember particularly clearly from my own practice, and one far enough back in time that I can share it, comes from my time as a transformation advisor at BRFkredit in the early 2010s, before the merger with Jyske Bank.

BRFkredit’s purpose was:

To offer homeowners flexible and competitive mortgage loans for financing properties.

Fair enough. And perhaps not especially exciting. But what did it actually mean for the individual employee?

Among other things, I worked with the Capital Markets IT team, which was one of the first teams to experiment with agile ways of working. In a workshop, I asked them to put words to their own purpose. They really struggled with it. Because what do you, in practice, have to do with “flexible mortgage loans” when you spend your days developing complex IT systems?

That was, at least, until one developer said, somewhat hesitantly:

We ensure efficient funding.

He got a few amused looks. But after we talked about it and sat with it for a while, something quite special happened.

Suddenly, their work was directly connected to BRFkredit’s reason for existing. Without their systems, no bond issuance. Without bond issuance, no loans. Without loans, no flexible and competitive financing.

That connection lifted the team. They could see their importance and their contribution to the organisation’s purpose. They could feel their role. They became proud. They were important all along, but they had lacked the language for it.

That connection, and the follow-up work of making it concrete in everyday practice, is everyday translation of strategy in its purest form.

Beautiful words do not create change

Far too many strategies live only at the top of the organisation. On slides. In kick-offs. In videos with dramatic background music. But they are never translated into the world employees actually work in.

Everyday translation is about making strategy present and usable:

creating a link between the strategic and the concrete
inviting teams into meaningful conversations
making strategy something we act on

It requires the courage to explore the question:

What does the strategy look like in everyday work?

Unfortunately, that question is often brushed aside. Sometimes it almost feels as if you are disturbing the good mood by asking it. “Things were going so nicely…”

But if we cannot answer that question, then we do not really have a strategy. We have an intention. And organisations are not lifted by intentions. They are lifted by everyday strategic conversations that create the frame and the direction for the work.

What we are missing is not more strategies.
What we are missing is more strategic everyday conversations.

We need to dare to ask: How is the strategy felt in what you do? Not as a control exercise, but as an invitation to create meaning. We need to take the time to keep that dialogue open and show real interest in the local translation that makes strategy meaningful.

The next time someone says, “We have just got a new strategy,” try asking:

What does the strategy look like for you on a rainy Wednesday, with a 15-minute lunch break squeezed in between back-to-back meetings?

That is where strategy proves its value.

The greatest unrealised potential?

What do you see? Are we right in saying that everyday translation of strategy is one of the greatest unrealised potentials in many modern organisations? We came very close to that conclusion after a few inspiring hours over a couple of good cups of coffee.

Thank you for the conversation, Martin and Kasper.

And although the picture may look realistic, it was made with AI.