Tool No 15: The Verb
HOW? Identify the important nouns in your core forms of communication, e.g. the company strategy. Now, reformulate the strategy replacing the nouns with active verbs.
One of the most common questions put to managers is: How will we turn our strategy into action? How will we deliver what we say? There is no end of literature on the topic, if you are that way inclined, but in my experience, active verbs will take you far.
Strategy documents are packed with wonderful nouns that make you think. The problem is that nouns aren’t exactly calls to action that trigger a response. Verbs do. With this in mind, I often ask the people I train to rework their strategy documents, using verbs to motivate the reader.
An objective such as “a customer-focused approach” becomes more action-oriented if it is restructured around a verb, e.g. “always ask the customer the three follow-up questions”. It says the same, but is more direct.
