How M&T Bank uses strategy tracking to shape its comms plans

Earlier this year, M&T Bank shared two annual priorities with employees instead of the usual four or five that it had in the past. According to Kevin Berchou, head of business and enterprise communications at M&T Bank, narrowing the list gave his team a more consistent way to track progress toward those priorities.

“I often joke with leaders at the bank, ‘Look, I’m not necessarily a detective,’” Berchou said. “‘I need you to point to a progress point, and then I can tell a story about it.’”

Rather than continue relying on leaders to remember examples of progress or asking communicators to hunt them down, M&T launched a web portal where colleagues can log what they did and connect it to one of the bank’s priorities.

“We’ve been able to develop a much richer set of stories,” he said. “I think that’s helped us demonstrate progress and demonstrate that we are, in fact, delivering on our strategy.”

Collect examples of strategy in action

The tracker gives internal communicators a consistent way to collect evidence that employees are moving the organization’s strategy forward. Berchou said that at M&T, employees can choose one of the two main priorities of the bank and explain how their work helped move it forward. By structuring submissions this way, each one is tied directly to something the bank has told employees it wants to accomplish.

The first priority, “team for growth,” focuses on how employees can help deliver value to clients within their role at the bank. The second, “operational excellence,” centers on making the bank easier to navigate for both customers and employees.

“The first one, you almost need to be in a sales role or supporting a sales role to really deliver against it,” Berchou told Ragan. “The second one, anybody who works here could do something that makes the bank easier to navigate. They’re designed to be fairly accessible, so employees can see themselves in them.”

Berchou said the tracker uses the same language leaders use in internal messages. That makes it easier for employees to select a priority and explain how their work connects to it.

“The hope is that it’s not a bridge too far to say to people, ‘These are the two things we want to do. Tell us how you’re making progress against them,’” he said. “Because we’re speaking a language people understand, we’re able to get a bunch of cool ideas.”

Let employees see strategy take shape

M&T’s tracker is accessible to everyone. Employees can view their colleagues’ submissions and see how work across the bank connects to its priorities. Berchou said that with this design, the tracker itself can reinforce the strategy before comms creates any additional messaging.

“You get a couple of wins when you launch a tool like this,” he said. “The first is it’s here. You can come in and you can see it. It’s crowdsourced, and just the existence of the tool is a signal that the firm is committed to these things.”

Berchou added that his team reviews the submissions and selects what he called the “greatest hits.” Those entries then become videos or posts on the company intranet.

“People are seeing stories from their colleagues amplified and elevated,” he said. “But they can also just see stories kind of building in the queue, so to speak. I think that’s kind of a cool reinforcement.”

Use the tracker to build the editorial calendar

A strategy tracker is most valuable when it’s part of a regular editorial workflow rather than something communicators check only when a leader asks for an update. Berchou said that M&T’s strategy tracker is one of the first places he looks when he needs inspiration for a story to tell.

“In a very real way, the tracker births the story,” he said. “I’m now in a position, because we’ve invested in building this tool, where when I want to tell a story, the first thing I do is go to the tracker. I find what I think is the best story from there.”

He also added that while the tracker is still a work in progress, it’s already altering how communicators at M&T learn about progress and how employees view it.

“It’s the first time we’ve ever done it,” Berchou said. “Is it perfect and is it elegant? It’s not perfect. It’s not elegant, but it works. We are slowly but surely shifting behavior and getting people to do what we’d like to see them do.”

For more insights on how strategy trackers can help advance your comms work, join the Ragan Communications Leadership Council.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.