The CEO definitely had a great strategy. This reduces time to production by a third, solves supply chain problems, and gets products to market faster than competitors. He worked with his executive team to map everything out and everyone bought in. A large all-hands meeting was held and the strategy was announced. They also published gorgeous PowerPoint slides and a short animated video showing how the new pipeline works.
After 6 months nothing happened.
The strategy was brilliant. However, the death penalty was not carried out. There was a gap. What caused the stagnation?
A fundamental principle I incorporate into every leadership room I work in is: Quality x Acceptance = Effectiveness. Sounds simple. That's not what it means. In this case, the company was unable to execute because the strategy simply was not communicated. Transmission gaps are one of the biggest and most persistent sources of friction facing business owners today.
Excuse me, but I'm a movie producer. Everything I do is viewed through the lens of filmmaking. A big tech convention in Las Vegas with lots of booths?I see it as a movie sales market. Is it the product release date? I think it's a red carpet premiere. An idea for a new startup? I think it's to get a team together and make another movie.
That's one of the reasons I'm able to work with executives and companies in a variety of industries, from multi-billion dollar companies to seed-funded startups. I made 40 movies. In other words, I have experience with 40 startups. We found an idea, found funding, assembled a team, commercialized it, tested it, and brought it to market. A successful example was franchising. Of course, I also went through 400 projects. I didn't Made. So I know the pain of a great idea that failed to find its place in the market or in the psyche of the target audience.
That reminds me of that CEO and the documentary I made called “A Plastic Ocean.” As you might have guessed, this is a movie about plastic in the ocean. When I signed, I had no idea it had the potential to be a huge hit. If people had a choice between Wolverine vs. Ant-Man, Wolverine vs. Iron Man, Wolverine vs. Barbie, Wolverine vs. Someone, they would watch Wolverine. But I was once president of National Geographic Films. The environment is important to my heart. I place great importance on environmental management. So I signed on.
But on day one, we realized we weren't making a Marvel sequel, and we knew we had to find a way to reach our audience. The problem was we didn't have a big budget. We needed to find a way to get our message across clearly.
We had a strategy. Let's bring people who care deeply about this issue to the cinema on opening day. But how?
Quality x Acceptance = Effectiveness.
We knew we were making a great movie. What we needed was acceptance. So we spent months filming and editing to build a coalition of 250 nonprofits involved in plastic reduction, ocean health, waterways, and environmental stewardship. One day, we asked them to send one message to the community. The idea was to share the trailer we had just posted on YouTube with everyone we knew.
They did. Within days it had more than 1 million views. This was the second message, which was sent to the people at Netflix, who picked up the film and released it worldwide. To date, A Plastic Ocean has enacted more than 150 new laws around the world, laws that improve recycling and reduce single-use plastics, as this has become a key advocacy message to concerned citizens.
We solved the communication gap by finding a strategic way to be accepted by the original audience: those already deeply connected to the film's values. That acceptance then sent a very different signal to the decision-makers of our second, much more powerful audience: the global streaming platforms that put movies in front of millions of people.
We got everyone on the same page, singing from the same mind and deciding on language, imagery, and methodology that clearly communicated the signal to all channels.
That's what strategy communication looks like when it works.
After 440 attempts to bring a project to fruition, here's what I learned.
- Identify the initial audience whose acceptance is important. Don't start with the entire company. Start by sharing your strategy with your core group, whose input, actions, and visible commitment will improve and drive your plan.
- Build your career, not just communications. It's nice to have a deck, but the deck doesn't run. people do. We hire people as ambassadors who can interpret and explain the value of the strategy through their own words and actions.
- Test understanding and action, not performance. Yes, people received your Slack messages. But did they read it? Also, was it interpreted the way you intended? Many transmission errors can be resolved with a concise live conversation rather than repeated written exchanges where the tone is unclear and the give-and-take response may not be natural.
Think about that CEO. He had a slide. He had a video. He called a meeting for everyone. He agreed. What he didn't have was a transmission system to carry signals from the office where strategy was born to those responsible for implementing it.
So here's a question. When your team explains strategy, do they realize they're in the CEO's shoes, great in the boardroom but invisible in the organization?
If the answer to that question is yes, then there are no implementation issues. There is a problem with sending.
