Strategic success hangs heavily on one component: alignment. Everyone involved in the strategy must agree on priorities, who will be accountable, and believe that the strategy will bring the benefits that are expected from it. But, to be aligned on your plans means you also need to achieve something else… Consensus.
Consensus isn’t just about being in agreement, it’s the collective ownership of individuals’ roles and responsibilities. Having consensus, by including a variety of individual contributions in strategy creation, leads to being aligned, and everybody working towards the same shared goals and objectives. This combination of consensus and alignment is what turns strategic plans into action.
Consensus involves finding a solution that fairly represents various interests and perspectives, while still agreeing on the overarching direction, goals, and plans when executing a strategy. It is a group process that aims to find mutual agreement, and strengthen accountability and collective ownership over roles and responsibilities, ultimately encouraging buy-in.
Typically, consensus is similar to a majority vote. However, the aim of achieving consensus is not to ‘win’ and simply reject ideas that aren’t well liked, but rather to co-create a plan that acknowledges different opinions and expertise. Those involved in strategy creation meetings should feel their opinions have been considered and their concerns addressed, which is then reflected in the strategy plans.
It enables employees from different departments across an organization to take part in detailed strategy discussions and contribute their insight. This creates a collaborative environment where decisions can be reached to achieve collective goals, rather than be impacted by personal biases.
For a strategy to be successful, consensus should be seen as a necessity rather than a luxury. Achieving consensus, firstly, can help to cascade your strategy across the organization, ensuring it is appropriately communicated and team members are also accepting of the plan. Consensus drives a sense of shared purpose and accountability, as it is dynamic and agile in its approach. Secondly, it is an enabler of positive progress — sharing mutual goals that you know you have contributed to shaping can improve strategic outcomes.
Without consensus, teams can become misaligned. This could either be not working towards the same objectives, or not fully understanding what needs to be achieved — which can negatively impact desired results. In our recent research, we found that 44% of employees struggle to connect their daily work to strategic initiatives, which can negatively impact a strategy’s success by delaying decision-making and causing inefficiencies.
A lack of consensus can also make it harder to motivate employees as they may feel their views are not valued, meaning they won’t be as committed to the strategy plans or push back more on new ideas. Encouraging and improving buy-in among employees will reflect better in strategy execution outputs, which will additionally have a positive effect on future strategic initiatives.
Building consensus within teams can present occasional challenges, in spite of a shared mutual interest to succeed, particularly when using outdated systems or more traditional ways of working (such as spreadsheets).
However, democratization of strategy creates open and transparent communication between employees, promoting collaboration within an organization.
When dealing with various different stakeholders, seniorities, and levels of expertise, it can be difficult to all agree on what is a priority. This adds complexity to achieving consensus, especially if you don’t already have a defined process in place to manage conflicting opinions or organize feedback.
If an agreement can’t be reached, this will add time to your strategic planning, delaying the ability to execute on plans.
Building consensus within a team can take a variable length of time, depending on the level of agreement and disagreement among stakeholders. Organizing meetings to discuss plans can also prove challenging when trying to align conflicting schedules.
However, if you’re in a time sensitive situation or simply need to reach a decision quickly, frameworks like the OODA loop work best — consensus building can still support this through feedback loops, but can take longer to reach a mutual agreement.
Investing in achieving consensus, and regularly repeating this process, can make it quicker for the future and contribute to creating comprehensive strategic plans.
Usually, feedback is given at set intervals through in-person reviews. However, this can limit responsiveness and strategic agility if employees are always waiting for the next set opportunity, as those involved may feel they have to accumulate points for discussion (which can also lead to meeting agendas being too full).
Consensus relies on clear communication channels and responsiveness. Without frequent, or simple, communication, consensus building could lose momentum or plans quickly become outdated.
It can be easy to settle for nothing less than ‘perfect’ — which is understandable when you have ambitious goals to work towards. However, when building consensus, the aim is to find a balance within all the different ideas and perspectives, which will help you make positive progress in the long-term.
To successfully build consensus, consider using the following strategies to streamline and organize the process. Being able to cascade strategy across your organization effectively will support consensus building techniques, making strategy building engaging and visible to all stakeholders.
Collaborative workshops are a great way of gathering, or creating, high-level ideas that can be shaped into a more formal plan of action. They serve as an opportunity for employees from various departments to work together when they might not usually. This means those with different perspectives are able to feed back in real time, give their contributions on how to improve an idea, and learn from each other.
Retrospective meetings offer another option for collaboration, with a view to bring beneficial improvements to a strategy reflecting on previous experiences. Holding regular retrospective meetings after initiatives can help in building consensus by collaboratively analyzing an activity to determine process improvements for the next steps in a broader strategy. They also contribute to shared understanding, ownership, and accountability through open communication.
Feedback loops are highly versatile in creating the open communication needed in building consensus. Using feedback loops ensures that everyone involved in a strategy is working from the most up-to-date information, enabling strategic agility and reducing the risk of misalignment.
Decisions will be based on relevant data meaning, when tracking strategic progress, it’s easier to adapt and evolve — but still be confident that stakeholders are aligned on changes to goals and objectives (if required).
While consensus building may require time and effort to get all stakeholders on the same page, it’s a worthwhile investment. You will benefit from better collaboration within teams and across departments, strengthening your strategy plans through this shared insight.
Consensus helps to make better, more informed decisions — leading to better results. Shared ownership and accountability go a long way in improving buy-in to a strategy, ultimately contributing towards strategic agility and success through alignment.