How to Connect with your Board (and other big bosses)

Communicate strategically to strategic thinkers

The executive was new in a role encompassing thousands of employees. The guy was deluged with meeting requests and frustrated by the experience. “Twenty minutes in,” he confided, “I often don’t know why they’re here or what they want.” 

This malady plagues board members, executives, and investors. They need input to make big strategic decisions, but they receive siloed, project-level details divorced from the organization’s strategy. 

Why is strategic context so vital for these leaders? Because by executing effective strategy their business will thrive—and so will they. So, to influence strategic thinkers, first understand their strategy. Which begs the question, “What is strategy?” In essence, it’s how an organization creates value. Strategy is the coordinated set of actions, in selected markets, that enable the business to outperform competitors—it’s how they’ll win. 

Here’s how you can get traction with your board and other powerful, strategically-minded thinkers.

View strategy through your audience’s eyes
We work with companies innovating to treat or diagnose diseases, so they think a great deal about creating value for patients. While board members and investors aren’t heartless, patient value is rarely their primary focus. Board members and executives want the business to win, profitably. Investors want financial rewards—as soon as possible. All of them care about risk/reward trade offs. Success stems from creating value for patients, but the company can’t do that if it doesn’t survive, or preferably, thrive.

Recently, a startup oncology client engaged us to develop a presentation to financial analysts and investors. As we got underway, the CFO commented, “It’s really just a data update on our clinical trials.” With that mindset, they had structured a slide deck that sequentially updated each trial.

That approach would have left it to the audience to interpret the progress of the trials without the context of our client’s strategy. Also, since analysts and investors have their own strategy, they’d be interpreting the trial progress in that context, too. You can see the potential for misunderstanding to compound. 

Communicate within their strategic context
The data update is important to the audience, but how can we re-frame it so that they see the connection to our client’s overall strategy, and the potential benefits to them? 

We’ll open by reminding the audience of our client’s strategy and then show how the new data increases the likelihood that this strategy will succeed. Progress within each of the clinical trials (a coordinated set of actions) increasingly indicates that our client will be able to improve patient outcomes over the current standard of care (outperform competitors) in a range of different cancers (selected markets)—finishing with a hint that success in these cancers could expand the company’s potential markets. Analysts and investors will have little trouble seeing how this could benefit their own strategies—and, we hope, recognize that the stock is a buying opportunity! We did something similar a couple of months ago and watched our client’s share price jump 50% two days after the presentation.

In an operational role, your lens tends to focus on progress toward operational goals. These are part of the “coordinated sets of actions” that comprise your organization’s strategy. However, when communicating up or across to a strategic audience, make their lens your lens. Become one of the few who links your operational actions to shared strategic goals. You and your message will stand out, and it’s more likely the room will relax, connect… and provide you with the support you need to succeed!

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