Bookstores are stacked with top selling books that all touch on the theme of Proper Alignment in one way or another. For individuals there is the series “Now, Discover your Strengths” and “Go put your strengths to work” by Marcus Buckingham. “Crush It” by Gary Vaynerchuk is a best seller about aligning with your passions, there are many more. For companies there is the tremendous book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins or “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and hundreds of others. Study these books and you will find a common theme of alignment. Aligning with your strengths, to markets, with opportunity and even technology and trends.
As a consultant one of the greatest benefits I can bring a company is proper alignment. To understand the need and benefit it is important to first understand what is alignment and why is it so important?
Being aligned is to have a proper relationship or orientation to produce at your full capacity and potential.
We have all seen the results of a poorly aligned car. When the body, steering and tires of a car are not aligned in their relationship with each other and the road the car works against itself. Unneeded friction occurs and the result is tires wear out early, gas mileage is reduced, extra stress and wear on the steering components and driver of the car is affected as they are constantly correcting the car toward the desired direction. The car is actually working against itself and the result is far less efficiency, potential and far greater costs. Just look at the picture above to see the affects of a misaligned tire and the inefficiency visible by heat. (Image courtesy of Infrared Imaging services)
The results of misalignment can be found in our bodies with our spine, in relationships of couples and especially in companies. The more moving parts an object or organization has the more prone it is to misalignment.
Two areas leaders should focus on for alignment
First, external alignment, is all aspects of your business outside of your organization and for the most part outside of your influence. External factors are your market space, competition, channels, consumers, economy, trends, technology, external communication and many other factors that affect your business. You must measure these areas on a scheduled basis and adjust when your company becomes misaligned caused from drift in your process or changes in the environment.
A few key areas to note:
Routes to market – are you aligned with the channels, partners and how your customer likes to engage with you? Are you and your partners agreements and process aligned with your customers needs?
Competition – are you different? If your customers cannot tell you apart from other providers in your space you need to search for “blue ocean”, there are many ways to create a unique selling proposition that take friction out of your selling process.
External communication – are you easy to talk to? This is probably the most important and least measured. The life blood of your business is customers (past, current and future). You must be accessible in ways that they can communicate honestly and effortlessly. If this communication channel is aligned you will find valuable information for other points of adjustment, if it is not you are shooting in the dark.
Second, internal alignment, is all aspects of your business that you can influence and control. Internal factors are company vision, goals, communication, employees, compensation plans, leadership, all divisions of business and their inter and intra workings. As with external alignment you need to measure these areas on a regular basis and look for drift in your process or changes in the environment that cause misalignment. Obviously, the larger the company the larger the job this becomes.
One key area to focus on is Communication – This is a broad term, but is the key to most internal alignment.
Starting with the basics of company vision and goals, can the average employee state clearly the goals of their job and how that helps achieve the goals of the company? It is more the exception than the rule of employees that understand those two core points that they should be basing daily decisions on.
Communication must be open and honest. Companies cannot make good decisions without knowing the facts. You must allow for the brutal and honest facts to be aired, examined and discussed for your communication to be real and beneficial to the company. There is a lot of truth in don’t shoot the messenger. If leaders allow their reactions to become the concern of employees rather than the honest facts, you create a communication culture that is impossible to function in reality; rather your organization will pass along half-truths, false reports and guarantee long-term failure.
There are many processes and tools available to aid in clear communication and measurement and accountability of that communication. Depending on the complexity of an organization, a simple procedure based email communication works for more complex organizations tools such as balanced score cards work well. The key is get a plan and process in place and measure it for success.
Get Aligned
Just as you cannot align your car from behind the wheel it is difficult to align your business from within. You need to step out and walk around your company to find areas of friction, inefficiencies and sometimes just broken procedures that are caused by misalignment. Bringing in an outside pair of eyes is often beneficial as misalignment is usually easier to see to a first time viewer of a strategy, process and business than someone that has lived with the drift. An outsider can also do honest analysis without placing blame and thus get a truer measurement and better adjustments.
If I can help your organization be more productive and efficient through finding proper alignment, please contact me at jeff@jeffadcock.com.