Alignment can be elusive for even the smallest start-up companies, never mind mid-market companies
What do I mean by business alignment? An article in IndustryWeek quotes Fred Smith, Chairman of Federal Express, as saying, “Alignment is the essence of management,” and says, “Alignment reflects active ownership on the part of team members, not simply the absence of disagreement… Alignment is an agreement on the goals of the organization and on the process of allocating resources to achieve these goals.” The HBR article I mentioned earlier describes alignment in this way: winning through a tightly managed enterprise value chain that connects an enterprise’s purpose (what we do and why we do it) to its business strategy (what we are trying to win at to fulfill our purpose), organizational capability (what we need to be good at to win), resource architecture (what makes us good), and, finally, management systems (what delivers the winning performance we need).
All kinds of alignment are critical to your organization’s success at all levels of the organization. Nevertheless, it is challenging to align horizontally across teams/locations/departments AND vertically, from the top-level company strategy all the way down to each front-line employee. Each person needs to align his/her work to the company’s goals, and your departments need to be aligned with one another so you don’t create unintentional silos, miss cross-functional project milestones, or create competition for shared resources. The executive team needs to be aligned around the company’s strategy and the right way to execute it. So how do you get your company to function as a well-oiled, fully aligned machine? The best way is to align employees with company goals and create a plan to execute it - from the executive team down to the customer service team and everyone in between.
Aligning your organization begins with establishing and articulating a compelling Core Purpose. According to Trevor and Varcoe, “ Purpose is the loadstone upon which every enterprise is built.” An article in Forbes describes the dangers of skipping this step: “Without establishing the ‘why’ it is difficult to built and protect a great organizational culture… If everyone isn’t totally aligned, the employees will eventually receive mixed messaging and start to lose faith in the mission.”
Bottom line: Your Core Purpose and Core Values are the glue that holds everything together. You should be abundantly clear about why you are doing what you are doing (Purpose) and how you should go about doing it (Values) because you need these fundamentals to make the right strategic decisions, hire the right people, to build the right organizational processes and capabilities, to attract the right customers and employees, to implement the suitable systems, and to help your employees make the right decisions every day about how to spend their energy and effort most productively. This is the foundation on which your aligned organization is built. Without a shared purpose to anchor back to, people will have nothing to guide their decision-making or knit them together.
A compelling purpose is essential but isn't significant unless you’ve communicated it effectively. Here’s a great video example of one of our clients sharing the story of his company’s purpose in a compelling, memorable, and impassioned way. Think about how you can communicate your Core Purpose so your employees will connect.
Company Alignment: Visualize Your Strategy and Execution
Next, create an aligned strategic plan - your BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) that aligns with your Core Purpose, your Winning Moves (3-5 year revenue generating strategies) that get you close to your BHAG, your Brand Promise that helps you attract the right customers, and your Core Competencies that help you build out the organizational capacity to support your growth strategies and differentiate your company from the competition. Trevor and Varcoe describe the importance of business strategy in this way: "If purpose is what the enterprise exists to achieve and why it matters, then business strategy is planning for what the enterprise must win at to fulfill its purpose.”
Creating a strategy aligned with your Core Purpose and Values is only half the battle… you must also execute that strategy. According to Trevor and Varcoe, "It is a reckless leadership team that commits to a business strategy without knowing whether they can achieve it.” You have to align your team's energy and your organization's capabilities, systems, and processes so that everyone is rowing in the same direction and focused on executing your strategic goals and creating a culture of transparency.
Company Alignment: Intentionally Structure the Right Culture and Hire the Right People
You must have the correct values, beliefs, and attitudes to cultivate alignment. Having an environment where people are transparent about their goals and willing to work hard to move the company forward doesn’t happen by accident. You must strategically design the culture you want - one where alignment can thrive. According to Forbes, "Leaders must create experiences that enforce cultural beliefs. And those beliefs must lead team members to take decisive action to achieve specific results proactively.” In order to do this, you must intentionally hire people who are naturally aligned with your Core Values and compelled by your Core Purpose. You also need to align team members' skills and strengths to each particular role to get the right people in the right seats.
A powerful tool that can help you ensure alignment in the hiring process is a Job Scorecard. Create a Job Scorecard for each position as you fill it. You can also use that Job Scorecard to help the person in the role stay aligned with the purpose of their position, their key responsibilities, and the expected results.
Corporate Alignment: Use a Collaborative Planning Process
Once you’ve figured out the strategy and people, you still have to build the right processes and rhythms in your company for alignment to flourish. A collaborative planning process is the best way to ensure you get all the correct information from the right people before creating your annual and quarterly plans and enforcing them during your weekly meetings. Company alignment is a skill that you acquire. You may need to do some trial and error, but we’ve found that this is an excellent place to start your collaborative planning process:
If it sounds like a lot of work, it is…. but it is worth it. Achieving alignment in your organization can have a powerful impact. IndustryWeek quotes Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, saying, “If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”
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