【正文】 ntracts.The ScorecardManagers and direct reports at GDDS meet one on one to create Scorecards, which set out five to seven personal annual goals. For example, the goals for shipping and receiving supervisor Tom Molleurs included plans to capture all incentive payments for early delivery and to cut direct costs 5%. Once a manager and subordinate reach agreement goals, they both sign the Scorecard as if it were a contract. From the worker’s perspective, this was a dramatic shift, says Newell “Tom” Skinner, at the time director of product delivery. “In the past we just set the goals and beat up employees to try to make them, but they probably didn’t even know why we had that goal in the first place.” Scorecards are “transmitter opportunities ” that clarify expectations and link daytoday activity to pany goals. And they work. Molleur’s group ended up cutting direct costs by 50 percent—not just 5 percent. What was the key thing that made it happen? Molleurs points to his weekly progress meetings. When they were behind schedule, Molleurs used the meetings to make sure the workers understood, through the Learning Map and Scorecards and other processes, how meeting or beating delivery schedules could increase petitiveness and win more contracts. Top management did simple things to make sure strategy messages were getting through. For example the president held monthly “pizza meetings” with everyone whose birthday fell that month. At these “transmitter opportunities,” he would ask attendees people to list their top three goals, and their boss’ top three goals. Within months, everyone could answer the questions.When effective dialogue pushes strategic imperatives downward in an organization, extraordinary things happen. Skinner extended an open invitation to any employee who wanted to attend his weekly budget meeting with his supervisors. One day an assembler showed up and said a part design was forcing assemblers to work by hand with “dozens of tiny screws, lock washers and nuts.” Skinner had the assembler meet with process control engineers for a redesign. The result: a job that had taken 12 hours was cut to four. “The best ideas e from the people doing the job,” says Skinner. Once the “conversation” got started, it took on momentum. Soon, people were ing into Skinner’s office without waiting for the weekly to discuss misalignment of strategy and behavior. Workers themselves were creating transmitter opportunities!It’s about behavior changeThe processes GDDS installed forced performance dialogue and ultimately changed behaviors. The message got through. But, like a tennis stroke, it didn’t happen quickly or automatically. It took coaching and practice. Sometimes you have to get it wrong, then make corrections through feedback and dialogue, before you get it right. One North American insurance pany embarked on a new strategy to expand sales with existing customers. The president created nine core value statements and broadcast the ideas repeatedly organizationwide. Soon, every manager could recite them by heart. Employees even had cards with the corevalue statements right at their desks.The message, however, wasn’t sinking in. An outside consultant saw one of the value statements on an underwriter’s desk that read “Never knowingly undersell a customer.” But the consultant listened to several of her calls and realized that she consistently failed to explore customer needs or try to upsell. “The pany had told her what to do, but didn’t follow through with the necessary rationale and appeals that would result in behavior change,” says the consultant. “As a result, her behavior was out of sync with the pany strategy.”So the insurer put together a training session and coached its underwriters on ways to explore customer needs and broaden the sale. When the consultant visited the same underwriter a few months later, he noted that she was sending birthday cards to customers and calling during the year—not just at renewal time—to identify unfulfilled customer needs. “It was only after repeated dialogue, including feedback and coaching, that the underwriter’s behavior aligned with pany goals,” explains the consultant.Figure 3: The coaching style on top teams[EDITOR’S NOTE: Vertical or “Y” axis needs to be labeled as “Percent indicating”Cutline: Teams that rely on a “coaching” managerial style get better performance— percentage of team members who observed the team leader using a “coaching managerial style.Creating opportunities to transmit strategy downOrganizations mitted to executing strategy devise innovative ways to make connections and circulate key messages. AlbertoCulver North America, the $600 million division of a $ billion pany whose profits tripled in 19942000, chose 70 “growth development leaders” (GDLs) from all levels of the pany to create clarity about strategy. One strategic goal was to recruit better talent. The GDLs moved through the organization to see what people were actually doing to meet the recruitment objectives. They found serious disalignment between goals and behaviors, says Jim Chickarello, group vice president of worldwide operations and one of the GDLs. For example, when job candidates came in for interviews, nobody gave them a basic overview of the business, Sometimes candidates would be left standing around because handoffs between various interviewers were poorly coordinated. And no one had consolidated interviewer evaluations, so there was no central location where AlbertoCulver managers seeking new people could get a snapshot of all candidates the pany had interviewed. The top team and the GDLs devised a plan and created simple systems to carry it out. For example they created forms outlining an “agenda” for candidates that specified where handoffs took place. No more waiting around. The GDLs developed takehome materials so that every candidate now gets a