Organizational Alignment

As a leader, you know that strategy, resources, and organizational capability matter, but do you know how to ensure they’re aligned? Organizationally aligned businesses get better results. Alignment is “a state of agreement or cooperation among persons or groups with a common cause or viewpoint.” When your organization nails it, all employees—from entry-level to your leadership team—share and act on your vision. Organizational alignment is the glue to performance excellence. It’s the absolute compatibility between paths, both strategic (goals, objectives, and activities) and cultural (values, practices, and behaviours). Successful strategy implementation can’t happen without execution, which requires an invested organization.
Think about rowing. Specifically, eights racing. In a good eight, everyone is in a relentless rhythm from start to finish. The Olympic attribute success to: “technique and teamwork to gain the maximum speed and distance out of every stroke. A rower or team must time their race to perfection, ensuring they have enough energy left for a fighting finish…the coxswain plays an important role, steering the boat and looking out for the tactics of rival boats while also giving instructions to his or her crew in order to be ready for the final spurt to the line. “Each team member knows their role and that they can rely on their coaching, training, equipment, and their teammates’ technique and commitment throughout the race. Seasoned rowers know how to respond to changing conditions and the team knows their role in the plan to adjust at any moment and get back into alignment as a cohesive unit. With alignment, you get better performance. When alignment is off, the boat strays off course, wasting time, energy, and resources. This is true for rowing teams and certainly true for your organization.
Organizational alignment requires communication and leadership. If that’s done well then employees don’t need to be in an office together from 9-to-5, Monday to Friday, to maintain that alignment. If people understand their organization’s vision and how their work meaningfully contributes to it, they’re naturally inclined to be active participants. People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. If an organization shares its vision broadly, and managers distil down to individual contributor level how their actions contribute to that vision, employees’ location shouldn’t matter. But without a renewed organizational alignment model, it could. You may need to adapt your business model and strategy and in some cases revisit your department structure and management teams to smoothly sail into a post-pandemic working environment.
Excellent leadership and management are essential for employees to be connected to an organization in remote and hybrid times. Communication for connection is key and managers who are empathetic and understanding—as well as solid communicators—will be the anchors for future success. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently spoke about the importance of managers during this transition period (a reference to the transition back to the office), suggesting that good managers with coaching mind-sets will be key to the new way of working. “If [there was] any time great management was at a premium, it was last year and a half,” he said. “Leaders needed to step up to create and keep the continuity of the connection. “The need for great management couldn’t ring any truer when it comes to supporting a positive mental health culture. With accolades for growth, culture, and excellence over the past decade, Sarah Bundy shares that, “being remote can sometimes cause isolation or loneliness, so it’s important to be proactive about combating this by engaging your team regularly. Implementing regular check-ins, weekly 1:1s, status updates, and engagement pulses are all ways to know what’s going on with your team.”
“Arguably, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world of work more radically than any other single event in our working lifetime. Defining how we use this opportunity to reset and transform our workplaces is now in the hands of all labour market participants. The decisions employers make today will influence their status as an employer of choice for many years to come. The war for talent will be won and lost on the battlegrounds of flexibility, skills investment, leadership and trust. The organizations that are able to “reset normal” on these four dimensions will not only secure the best talent, but will also be the most effective in managing their human capital to create sustainable success for their organizations, for the individuals they employ, and for society at large.
Flexibility is the new currency in the workplace between employees and employers. After a tried and tested period of uncertainty and relentless change, the ability to be nimble, agile, and resilient in our future world is more than essential—it’s expected. Employee expect and seek greater flexibility with their workday and week structures to allow for more work-life balance. The result is a more balanced, happier employee who can focus on the needs of the business versus hours worked.  Adecco Group reported 65 percent of non-managers, 72 percent management, and 76 percent executive/C-level would agree. ”Within this scenario, key performance indicators related to output and impact would be the main metric by which a knowledge-economy employee is measured, as opposed to how long they have worked. Employees would have flexibility in framing their hours and working style, so long as they complete the tasks they are contracted to do and deliver the results expected of them. This would be a significant departure from what was once the norm for many businesses, where “time at desk” was considered important in assessing whether an individual employee was a productive and contributing team member.
For the model to be a success, the high levels of trust that have been established between employees and employers during the pandemic must continue. In fact, over three-quarters (78 percent) of employees say that feeling trusted to get the job done will be important after the pandemic. “Sarah Bundy echoes this—from her tried and tested experience, “teams appreciate the flexible working hours that remote environments provide, the cost and time savings on not needing to communicate every day, and the casual work environment that allows them to do their best work from wherever they work best. “The ultimate goal of providing flexibility and instilling high levels of trust is to impact the well-being of employees. With this, everyone wins. With the pandemic’s abrupt impact, many of us have been forced into an accelerated uptake of digitalization, presenting an opportunity to reset, re-skill, and up-skill for the benefit of organizational alignment. With this hungry appetite to use technology for connection, it’s a pivotal time to build a foundation of organizational alignment within your digital tools.
Does your organization need to adapt its model for a sustainable working future and to thrive in a “return to work” world? Thought Exchange can be a trusted tool to help tap into your best assets to inform your post-pandemic business strategy.  Fuel your strategic path to support your organization’s cultural path, inspiring trust and improving your business performance. Communication tools such as Slack, project management tools such as Teamwork, CRM/automation/operations tools such as Salesforce, and reporting tools to understand progress and results could all be beneficial in helping you with connection and in turn alignment. There are many digital tools available for remote data analysis, document sharing and storing, security, sales and marketing. These can often connect with each other to create more efficiencies than what you might find in a more traditional non-remote model. And remember to stay nimble and keep evaluating your approach as time goes on. Thought Exchange can help your organization achieve organizational alignment.
(Writer can be reached at:[email protected])