Rick H.
Provider of Talent Management Through Business Lens at CornerstoneOnDemand.com
How important is alignment in executing your business strategy? http://polls.linkedin.com/p/42240/dpekh
Looking to up responses to poll (http://polls.linkedin.com/p/42240/dpekh). Some feedback from other users is to consider:
- what are you aligning to?
- alignment is good, but integration is better.
Good Answers (9)
Jim M.
Director, Collaboration Whole Offer at Cisco Systems
Best Answers in: Organizational Development (1), Planning (1)
Alignment is critically important to execute a business strategy successfully in a timely and cost effective manner. Valeria's comment makes the key points in support of this position.
However, the next several layers of questions are much more complex:
1. What/who needs to be aligned (e.g., vision, goals, activities, processes, metrics, reward system, leadership team, employees at large, union, Board of Directors, investors, creditors, products, services, channels, target customers, image)? This list could expand to every conceivable element of a business.
2. To what degree do they need to be aligned (perfection is rarely achieved)?
3. How does an organization achieve alignment (e.g., upfront participation, communication, transparency, cross-functional ambassadors, contractual concessions)?
4. How does an organization know that it has achieved alignment (e.g., MBO sign-off, surveys, contract signing, morale, employee turnover)?
5. How does an organization sustain alignment (e.g., strategic consistency, metrics, reward systems, transparency)?
The answers to these questions are situation specific. For example, the answers for a corporate growth strategy will be wildly different from those for a turnaround strategy or a go-to-market strategy.
Developing a strategy is actually quite easy. The concept of strategic alignment amply demonstrates that execution is always the difficult part.
At the end of the day, value is created by execution – not strategy.
Links:
Valeria S.
Principal at Metrus Group
Best Answers in: Personnel Policies (6), Staffing and Recruiting (3), Compensation and Benefits (2), Change Management (1)
Rick--
As I expect you must have experienced in your own work, alignment is critical to complete strategy execution. When alignment is in place, all of the resources of the organization are moving in an aligned and synchronous manner towards the shared stratic goals.
If alignment is poor, then focus on the goal will be diffused, effort will be wasted, and if the goals are accomplished, it will take more time and investment than necessary--which no one can afford in these times!
In addition to the work by Kaplan and Norton, I recommend "Bullseye! Hitting Your Strategic Targets Through High Impact Measurement", by W. Schiemann and J. Lingle. They cover the strategic approach to creating a scorecard--and offer one of the first places that you will see coverage of strategy maps, and of inclusion of environment (sustainability) as a key dimension. (more about the book in the website noted).
Valeria
Links:
Jody B.
Partner at ACHEV
Best Answers in: Organizational Development (4), Mentoring (1), Change Management (1), Labor Relations (1), Ethics (1)
An excellent question! Is it possible for an undertaking to find success without alignment? Yes; nd many have which makes the job of convincing how important alignment actually is very difficult.
If an organization is not fully aligned are they enjoying maximum success? Probably not, at least in the longer-term. This becomes the crux of the problem, because most leadership/mangement focus tends to be on the short-term. This is especially true in today's environment.
If we seek long-term success and effectiveness the organization should align to a "shared vision". That shared vision, needs to offer a noble purpose for being (going beyond merely making a profit) and it should convey what the promised future will look and feel like. While it was not so important over the last 50 or so years, this idea of noble purpose is most relevant today. The leaders task is to insure that each and every job and position can in some way connect to that vision. He/she must make a disciplined effort to communicate this connection in every interaction. If this is not done the organization slowly but surely drifts into mediocrity.
Teams that are fully aligned in such a manner have higher morale and with that comes improved commitment, productivity, and profits which can be used, at least in part, for the noble purpose of existance.
Integration is a broad term with respect to this discussion. If my interpration is correct, integration is the inclusion and connection of every action back to that original vision. Every deviation from that overarching purpose will tend to diminish the efficiency in some way, most important of which being employee attitude. It is absolutely neccesary for the learning organization (one that is continually striving to improve) for the perception of congruency to exist within the mind of each employee.
Upon reviewing this post, I am tempted to erase and not submit. I am not sure that I have been very clear or offered new or stimulating thought. In the hopes there is at least one good thought, I am submitting in hopes that someone will expound and improve.
Jody
In addition to the answers provided, you may also consider looking at the the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award's site and specifically take a look at the reference to moving from alignment to integration on page 65 of the Criteria booklet and also understand the categories of the Baldrige Criteria and how business strategy plays into overall success.
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Bob A.
Inflexion-Point: Working with ambitious B2B companies to construct highly scalable sales and marketing machines
Best Answers in: Computers and Software (2), Offshoring and Outsourcing (1), Quality Management and Standards (1), Incorporation (1)
Rick
Alignment with what? I've seen a number of reports and polls that suggest CEOs rate sales and marketing alignment as a high priority, but it's always struck me that alignment has to have a context.
I'd suggest that every element of an organisation needs to be aligned against a clear and common vision of who their best customers and prospects are, what really matters to them, what might cause them to take action, and how and why they choose to buy.
Further, the actions of the organisation must then be integrated and refined such that they elevate customer value, eliminate wasted or duplicated effort, and facilitate the buying process.
We've found that the "lean" thinking that has revolutionised the manufacturing process in recent years can be applied with great profit to all customer facing operations, as well...
Links:
Octavio B.
Global Thinker ★ Corporate Strategist with focus in 2.0 Technologies
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Rick,
A business strategy is always required, alignment is mandatory and integration is good.
Strategic planning is the long term plan that being envisioned and supported by CEO and Senior Management makes possible that an organization may progress predictably from a current business perspective that could be worrisome, oppressive and threatening toward a new one and most favourable perspective from the point of view of gaining a better market positioning, a stronger financial performance, consolidating operational excellence and delivering a platform to provide true satisfaction for customers, stockholders and employees.
In organizations where strategic planning is systematically developed, continuously reviewed and their concomitant projects are ,executed systematically and when senior management has developed as part of its managerial practices, a thorough analysis of relevant information by using tools of competitive intelligence, this company may control systematically its pattern of organic growth in accordance to the perceived risks of a volatile and highly competitive market where only the most efficient companies will become in true winners and will have the inherent capacity of being truly competitive considering a long term perspective.
Most of the Fortune 500 organizations utilize consistently relevant tools to make strategic analysis such as Balanced Scorecard; make competitive intelligence by analysing industrial benchmarks and other relevant data; use systematically information derived from KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to streamline its operational processes and thereby makes better business decisions and have a deep understanding about the tactic role that a project portfolio with excellent alignment to the corporate strategy play in achieving the business goals that have been envisioned in the strategic plan.
The effective role of Top Management in supporting project planning and execution is instrumental to ensure that operational excellence meets with an appropriate strategic alignment. When this goal is fulfilled, the stakeholders of the projects will have real reasons to feel genuine satisfaction about the goals and milestones that may be achieved during project execution.
The key factor in developing initiatives of strategic alignment is having full consensus in CEO and Senior managers about the relevance, and convenience of defining a set of strategic guidelines that can be unequivocally described, rationally analysed and easily measured in function of strategic goals or milestones that may be attached to the execution of the relevant projects with the potential of adding true business value.
After identifying the most important strategic milestones is pertinent identify and characterize a portfolio of projects whose execution may deliver true business value from each one of the relevant business perspectives by applying tools of strategic monitoring like Balance Score Card: a) The Learning & Growth Perspective, b) The Business Process Perspective, c) The Customer Perspective and d) The Financial Perspective.
Once you have identified and ranked the portfolio of projects in function of its value in supporting the business strategy is convenient the identification of metrics that ensure that project execution is being developed successfully. If such metrics may prove be relevant for a successful project execution, may be replicated over and over again and have a significant strategic value, then these metrics are true KPI (Key Performance Indicators) that may be effectively utilized as indexes of true strategic alignment.
Relevant to your question, I am including 3 links to questions, I have posted time ago in Linkedin Answers:
1. How would you find strategic misalignment of a corporate project?
2. When coaching is advisable to align operational capacity with business strategy?
3. Is Corporate Culture as important as Strategy to ensure business success?
Octavio
Links:
Dan M.
Project Server Administrator at Abbott Laboratories
Best Answers in: Career Management (2), Job Search (1)
In terms of alignment, it may be helpful to keep in mind that alignment itself is not the goal - it's a condition that makes achieving the goal more likely or even easier.
I'd suggest starting with a look at your strategic objectives. Test each one by asking, "does this objective represent a true and legitimate choice?" If you can't imagine one of your competitors making an opposite choice (e.g. Ferrari and Ford are both cars but very different) then the objective may not be as strong, clear, and compelling as it should be. This is important because if you want to align your organization to the strategy it helps to have a solid strategy!
As Jim M. pointed out, value comes from execution of strategy and not the strategy itself. So, armed with a solid strategy, an aligned organization makes successful strategic execution more probable. I'd suggest looking at the following five factors for alignment with your strategy:
1. People - do we have the right skill sets and are we acting according to our values?
2. Process - are we as efficient as possible in our operations?
3. Information - does accurate information flow quickly within our organization?
4. Motivation - do we actively encourage (not just with $$) the behavior we want to see?
5. Structure - have we created an organization that helps or hinders our approach to the market?
To add a bit to the degree of difficulty, these five factors do not operate in a vacuum nor are the independent variables. How they operate depends on the context or culture of an organization and they are not independent but interdependent variables. Push hard enough on one and the other four will be pulled along (often further out of alignment).
Great discussion on this thread!
While alignment is critically important to successfully execute strategy, I would like to highlight a caveat. In particular, Organizations mustn't lose sight of their core values and their mission in both the design and execution of strategy. The mortgage crisis is a flagrant example of how alignment to execute a typical business strategy--"maximize profit" can be well executed from a functional and operations perspective, yield extreme financial gains, and result in catastrophic failure. In my experience, it doesn't require complex, advanced strategy formulation to stave off these "wrong turns." Often it's as simple as one person challenging the popular opinion and voicing their concern. Someone mentioned the Balanced Scorecard and that’s a great tool. My experience is most managers probe deeply into those areas that are underperforming or behind schedule but accept with little or no explanation those areas that are outperforming. IMHO, it's more important for management to question rapid, unforecasted prosperity with more diligence than lagging endeavors to ensure the growth isn't reckless or cancerous.
To address your question regarding integration…I recommend that socialization and assimilation take place prior to integration. It's important that all involved employees, vendors, managers and organizations clearly understand the corporate culture(s), their role and responsibility, and the roles and responsibilities of each other. This can be a difficult step and is often omitted in lieu of "time constraints" (e.g. the perception that anything but ACTION is waste of time), or resistance to the potential conflict that such an activity is likely to cause, or the "common sense" expectation that everyone knows their role and responsibility based of their department, division, or company--the hope is that everyone will figure it out along the way. As a student of the late Michael Hammer, he emphasized the point of hashing out roles and responsibilities as an important first step of any change management initiative.
Alignment is important, as much on "who" as on "how".
The decision making individuals should be aligned in a manner that the flow of the project is consistent and efficient, without unnecessary delays from back and forth interactions.
