I’ve been at places where the corporate policies were just buzzword doublespeak and they are a waste of time. Everyone knows it’s bullshit.

I’ve also been at exactly one place where the leadership team gave serious thought to what their goals were for the organization. Then they wrote down a set of goals that were

• simple
• coherent
• actionable And that actually made it easier to do our jobs. When we had to make a decision, we could actually refer to these principles and use them.

It was crazy helpful!

…And then they hired a fuckton of Ex-Amazon managers into high-level roles and they promptly drove away all the best people and replaced the helpful principles with Amazon’s work-or-die philosophy. So I bailed. 😭

Well, most of the time, faulty leadership and bad hierarchies fail to construct coherent strategies. But, strategy is supposed to be the guiding lead to a whole organization’s activities. A good quality strategy implementation has clear goals in mind and can be used to elaborate clear and concise mission statements for all the functional parts of the organization. A “focus on resilience” can be translated into many things at an operational level, but it’s way too vague at an strategic level. Why do they want to be more resilient? is the appropriate counter questioning here. Better serve customers, how? Why key player?

It’s different from “focus on production resilience to respond to customers regardless of adverse market circumstances”. That is more actionable. It’s part of the strategic responsibilities of middle management to translate that into tactical operational actions and communicating them to individual staff. For example, product design can create redundant packaging alternatives that use different levels of different materials, so shipping can respond to material shortages without incurring too much delay. Logistics can call for cache storage of production critical materials. Then factory can come up with the production plans for each packaging alternative and a contingency plan in case of shortages. Then acquisitions can scout ahead of time the different vendors for materials that would be required. Finance has to come up with a plan to finance the new storage caches. Marketing and sales can come up with reward plans to compensate customers on delays, and advertisement messages that spin negative circumstances into positives, etc. This is just one possible line of actions, out of infinite possibilities depending on industry, product and structure.

That’s a well formed strategy. Now, just giving a hollow presentation to an all hands meetings is not the most efficient way of communicating but yet again, a lot of incompetents make it into management without having a damn clue of what is their job.

I will say I went from a place that had these meetings to one that doesn’t. It’s more concerning when leadership doesn’t seem to have any plan at all, even if the plan is “do a good job and sell this much of this thing”.

It means someone way up the ladder fucked everything up, and now they want you to work twice as hard for the same amount of money but they want to spin it to sound like something they intended to do all along and they want you to believe it’s somehow a good thing for you as well.

I’d say their main goal is to keep managers busy with something to prevent them from hindering work that needs to be done to keep the place running. ;)

Creating it is a job to give someone they want to promote. It gives them visibility with a large amount of management and tells that management that this person is moving up. The resulting whatever becomes a thing managers can then use to justify just about any decision they make. It is also used for countless hours of meeting where the real goal is for the “leadership” to advertise how important they are. I shit you not, the company I worked at previously had full on film crews with makeup professions make glamor videos of direct level folks talking about it like they were imparting wisdom from the ages.

I’m now working in a large corporation for the first time ever, so I’m not sure if anything makes sense.

But if I were running a big organization, my reason for communicating overall strategy to everyone in the organization would be to ensure they have context they need to make decisions themselves, as opposed to always needed to seek guidance from their boss.

Nobody in management wants to admit the truth: the corporation exists to further enrich its already wealthy owners. That sort of mission statement, however accurate, isn’t going to inspire anybody to buy into the corporate culture, let alone put in unpaid overtime by working more than 40 hours a week on a salary.

Considering the often-abstract nature of these presentations, I thought ChatGPT might be able to give a decent answer:

Great question! Corporate strategy statements and plans serve several purposes in office culture. First and foremost, they provide a roadmap for the organization, outlining its goals, priorities, and the path it intends to take to achieve success. This helps align everyone in the company towards a common direction.

When executives present these plans in meetings, they aim to communicate the company’s vision and objectives clearly. By breaking down abstract concepts into actionable steps, they hope to inspire and motivate employees. It’s about creating a shared understanding of what success looks like and how each individual contributes to that success.

The use of corporate jargon and abstract language might seem unnecessary, but it often stems from a desire to create a cohesive narrative that resonates with the company’s values. It’s an attempt to build a sense of identity and purpose among employees.

Moreover, these presentations can serve as a platform for leadership to emphasize the company’s commitment to its core values. By highlighting aspects like customer focus, product excellence, and the importance of the workforce, leaders reinforce the company culture and guide behavior.

In essence, these meetings are not just about conveying information; they’re about fostering a collective mindset, aligning teams, and creating a sense of belonging and shared purpose. While it may feel like a lot of effort for seemingly vague information, the hope is that employees leave with a clearer sense of direction and motivation to contribute towards the company’s success.