Hey, good morning everyone. Um We seem to have hit our time and we have people uh headed in. So I'm gonna just kick right off and get started. Uh It's really exciting. Thank you to everyone who put in where you're from.It's just really exciting to see kind of, you know, where everyone's joining from today. I see some kind of linkedin links. It's nice to be able to, to connect and that's why these types of events are so important. So thanks to everyone. Um So I'm Christy White. I'm the chief of staff at full script and full script is a tech company that created a platform to help practitioners prescribe integrative medicine and patients follow their integrative pro protocol. So chief of staff are the connected tissue of the organization and success of the role is largely dependent on alignment, building, alignment and creating clarity. Hence the topic of my talk today, strategic alignment, driving a culture of clarity. I haven't always been a chief of staff and I'm a policy nerd by training and I spent my early career researching and drafting policy briefs working in the government. The goal was to create clarity um around a problem quickly so that decisions could be made when I left the government and went into the private sector, the rigid templated environment of briefing notes, really regulated decision making processes and steps didn't exist.

And I quickly saw how my skills as a policy analyst were transferable and valuable. Um I often saw that problems were coming up from people walking away from the same conversation with different expectations or a different understanding of the goals and the a and the and the actions.

And so I do wanna just kind of share maybe a bit, you know, any any friends fans remember this couch episode? Um You know, Ross makes a plan. He actually draws a diagram, explains how they will maneuver up the stairs and Ross yells pivot a lot. Now, all the comedic factors aside that banter from this moment between the characters, what sticks out to me and I wanna highlight is that Chandler says, what did you mean when you said pivot? What do you mean a simple but powerful clarifying question? But that question to build clarity, it often goes unasked or people assume so everyone can sit in the same room and walk away with a slightly different idea. It also means that those slight divergences and little misalignments create friction and, and they slow things down. So let's talk about those moments of frustration where you see misalignment. I know that everyone listening has had these moments. You know, you find yourself in a meeting and you think, wait, are we back here again or you're thinking, doesn't this person understand the strategy?

How could they be so far off? This isn't the goal or I told them? So, you know, now some of you might be thinking this is just poor communication and you're right, there are a lot of best practices for communication that are valuable to driving alignment, the problem you could fix or fill the alignment in one off. You can have many small conversations, many context setting meetings, draft and reshare a document, but repeating the conversation many times or having the same conversation over and over again. Um It doesn't often get to the root cause or allow you to scale. If your company or your team is small, maybe you can, but you need to look at the root cause so that you can build clarity at scale. And so how do you make alignment and clarity part of the culture? That's a problem I wanna talk through and some of my experiences with that and I don't have it all figured out there's still lots of room to grow. So how do you make it clear so that people demand it, it's delivered in formats. So it's memorable and people are connected to it. If I asked around the room today, each person here would come from a company with a slightly different operating model. Really? No, no two teams no two companies, no two cultures are really alike.

Um a different series of activities, steps and processes that are used to build alignment. Some people work in really cross functional environments and others and contained departments operating almost independently. And there are so many templates and frameworks out there to create clarity, playbooks, one pagers, performance dashboards, I think the problem we have to solve for is not what specific framework or tool but how we ingrain clarity into the culture where people expect it demand it and the company delivers it.

You know, and I said about tools. Well, look at this, remember how I just said picking a format or a tool isn't the solution? Fancy formats and visuals are not always helpful if people don't understand them, so you can put this out there, but it won't necessarily drive alignment. And so I wanna talk through uh a few things for me that help build this culture of clarity, one understanding and actions that match the understanding, actions that match. What do I mean by that? It means that items latter and connect back, nothing feels like it doesn't fit.

And when it doesn't fit, we call it out inquisitively and drive conversations that build clarity. You know, how do you check that people understand? So in planning sessions, uh at full script, I introduced a rule called silence means yes. And I know it sounds a little extreme.

Um but it was really about assuring that you don't have perceived, expect, uh um sorry, perceived acceptance. Um, you know, so you sit in a meeting, everyone smiles and agrees. But they don't, this sometimes means that people think, you know, I don't agree. So I'm gonna work really hard in a silo and I'm gonna prove that this other way is, is better or I'm just gonna kind of, I think my idea is better and go and it all happens and sometimes it happens just a little bit and sometimes things can be really off thing I wanna call out is sometimes we make calculated bets and we do something that is a bit off strategy as a test, but those are agreed to and those are different.

So what I'm talking about is saying yes, by not saying no or speaking up and in not being fully committed, you're not aligned with the plan and you create friction. If you're in a meeting with 10 people and three don't agree and say nothing, then people are working against each other. So this is one of my favorite images and I apologize because source unknown, but it really shows how all the extra effort to work hard and the energy to prove your point in actions versus spending the time upfront, asking the questions and building the alignment, it cancels each other out.

That's what I love about this. It's showing you you might be working really hard, but you're not working in the same direction. So you can spend a lot of time and energy in a silo, but you can't move because you're not trying to move in the same direction you get stuck and things move slow. So leveraging a rule like silence means yes, really places an importance on not just silently disagreeing. So you get it out in the open. I also wanna call out that we also say you can disagree and come back later. So sometimes we need time to digest information and we need to create points, right? And so in planning processes, it's really good, especially where we're in remote environments a lot now and teams are spread out is really safe being. Hey, did anything change from the last time we talked or has anyone had time to think about this and really, you know, wants to come back with a new question or a new thing to add to the table before you kind of continue, you don't set it and forget it. It's often an ongoing process alignment. So I think the other way to check that people understand is to ask. So at full script, we include questions on understanding the company strategy in our biannual culture survey. And that score tells us how we're doing.

Do people understand what the strategy is of company, you know, do they feel connected to that strategy? And that's really important, you know, you need to ask. OK, so make the complex simple, this might actually be the hardest part. Um in organizations, we all have a different seat and frame. We have experiences and knowledge that is interwoven, but we need to build a common vision or in a narrative. What feels obvious in our own mind isn't always forever sorry, isn't always for others. Um You know, we wanna make sure that, you know, people hear what needs to be heard. And we have another saying at full script that is explicit but editable. And I wanna really call that out because we all get this writer's block. We fumble in creating the perfect document, the perfect guide, the perfect one pager because we get tripped up by putting something out there that people don't understand or they're not bought into or gasp, they rip it apart and everyone doesn't like your document. But you know what, that's actually what you want. Um When we're explicit in how we're thinking about something, it gives context and clarity that allows people to ask questions and for there to be alignment, the editable part is so important, it's editable because you're trying to build clarity and drive alignment.

So you know, if the document you draft looks completely different in the end that isn't failure, that's alignment. And so one thing I wanna just call out is um could be its own topic on its own. So I won't spend time on it, but I encourage everyone to explore uh first principles, thinking uh it's a really great way to think about how you make a complex narrative simple. So part of this kind of complex narrative being simple is starting early and often you need to spread the message across the organization. And it's, as I've already said, it's beyond using one template or a one page playbook at full script. We have a long history of weekly town halls moments to share wins and updates. But a few years ago, we started explicitly using them for alignment and added in strategic alignment as a goal for our town halls. You know, after our annual planning process which had several inflection points for clarity built in the CEO would get up in front of the company and deliver the vision for the year making that complex narrative simple. Uh The rest, you know, the teams would reiterate, we would set the expectations over the following weeks.

This is how we're going to deliver clarity and important milestones in the company were connected back to that first conversation and then one pagers and long form narratives are shared, they became the reference tools. And so maybe you should ask. So what does building a culture of this look like? For me, it was the moment where in year two, an employee was immediately following up and saying, hey Christy, where's that one pager? Just like last year? We're gonna get XYZ, right? Because you build a model and culture of expectation. People expect clarity they crave it. And so the last is building connection to the strategy. So you'll often hear this referred to as organizational commitment. So what is the connection or bond that employees have with the organization?

This starts with connection to the mission, vision and strategy. If we go back to the first point and talked about understanding and ensuring people understand, you know, and then we talked about rolling out this narrative and I talked about town hall and making that message simple.

But that connection where each employee understands and is connected. You know, that's how, you know, you want everyone to be able to answer that question. So I know where I fit and how I drive strategy. What does that, what does it mean for me is always the question that people are trying to answer. You know, I have so many context building conversations and I'm surprised how often I hear, well, my department or project, it's different, it's not really connected. And that's why it's so important to be able to build that thread in that narrative. And also make sure that there are other champions throughout the organization that can do that. So when they hear people say, well, I, I don't really fit, they can say you absolutely do or point you to the person that they should talk to, to understand where they fit those connections. And two way narratives are really, really important to answer that. What does it mean? For me, you know, we build out a schedule at full crap after our strategy roll out where the CEO spends time with teams building that alignment and clarity skip levels, having conversations beyond reporting lines. You know, I mentioned earlier, we all have different seats in the org. So we need to understand how different people are thinking about it. Um You know, and the other call out is you will never have perfect alignment or 100% clarity, you'll have peaks and valleys.

But if you build a culture of clarity where people understand and ask when they don't understand, you create the communication program uh where people feel connected and demand clarity. So you can really minimize, you know, kind of the, the height of the peaks and the depth of those valleys because you won't, the employees won't allow you to get too far off of having clarity or alignment because they'll ask questions right? There's pivots and changes, what does it mean? So, so what now what like, what does this mean? So I wanna kind of say, you know, I know everyone's coming from different seats, different positions, but everyone is part of the culture of clarity. Uh It starts with asking what something means. Um You know, it's then thinking, OK, if I'm asking this, who else is asking this? You start to ask your own questions and ask who else might not have clarity and help build the tools and the do documents that drive that clarity in a consistent way to deliver, then you can be part of creating a culture of clarity and then building out programs where people expect it and hold yourself accountable.

So it really starts with one question, what do you mean and grows? So if you want a culture of clarity, you need to create the space for people to understand demand, they understand it. Silence means yes. As I said, uh make the narrative simple and tell that story over and over again in many formats and build connection. Make sure everyone can say, I know where I fit and how I drive the strategy. And that's how you build a culture of clarity that really drives strategic alignment. And that's kind of how we've done it in a full script so far. So I know uh that's all for me for now. But I will just call out and see if there are any questions before we, before we wrap up for today. OK. So there is a question here about um striking a balance between um expecting subject matter expertise and cognizant of technical lexicons with making the complex simple. So I think that that is uh a good question. I think that a lot of times that's where having those skip levels or having those sessions after, you know, we'll often have say the CEO and the CTO talk to the engineering team and really understand that. OK. Here's what this means for the organization, here's what this means for uh engineering.

So that to your point, you can call it some of those subject matter experts and make sure that that narrative connects and ties back, which is really important and why it's kind of, you know, we sometimes call it a roadshow at full script. You know, after the strategy, you go around to each department and really understand that. What does it mean to me question? All right. Well, there don't seem to be any more questions. So um thank you to everyone. Uh I think that we're out of time. Uh connect with me on linkedin and message me if you have any other questions. Thanks everyone.