Leadership and business writer Jim Collins says that “building a visionary company is one percent vision and 99 percent alignment.” One critical aspect of leadership is creating alignment of the entire system and organization. The success of the organization or program depends on strategically aligning the people, culture, purpose, and strategies to reach significant goals. When alignment on a team suffers, it’s very challenging to chase larger goals because there’s constant friction during the process. Here are five areas needing alignment for teams and organizations to succeed:
- Leader and Purpose: Winning teams and organizations need a leader with a clearly developed purpose. The leader should clearly state the purpose and make decisions based on that purpose. When leaders lose sight of their purpose, they often fail to move the organization and its people in the right direction. How well does the leader align with a specific purpose?
- People and Culture: Developing a successful team means recruiting, hiring, and onboarding the right people. Every team and organization has a culture it has created and developed over time. The people who come on the team must clearly align with the culture. In addition, the people currently in the organization must continually evolve and align with the culture. How well do the people align with the current culture?
- Vision and Strategies: Teams that excel, win, and produce create a larger vision for the future of the organization. The vision is often large and lofty, but it creates a clear idea of what the future looks like for everyone on the team. In order to achieve that vision, the strategies must align with what it takes to achieve that vision. The leadership must track whether the strategies they’re taking support the vision they have. How well do our strategies align with our vision?
- Planning and Focus: Successful teams plan using a very intentional focus of where they want to go. When everything is important, then the planning becomes less impactful. Prior to developing a process and setting out strategies, the focus of the organization needs to narrow to clearly defined areas that impact the team the most. How well does our planning align with a clear focus?
- Values and Action: Every leader and organization creates values that matter most to them. Winning teams and organizations align their values and the actions they take every single day. If they believe that hard work is critical to their success, every person shows up and gives great effort each day. While every organization has different values, the actions should clearly align with those, and everyone must hold each other accountable to those standards. How well do our actions align with our values?
A clearly aligned organization and team often leads to success because everything works systematically. Alignment of the organization, the process, and systems relies on continuously improving what’s been done in the past and what happens in the future. The leadership team must think big picture and systematically create alignment for everyone.
What areas need clear alignment in order to achieve results?