- Even if you think you have a near perfect strategy
remember that it needs to be executed by
mostly imperfect people.
So how can you ensure that workers follow
an optimized process for achieving
the organization's strategic goals?
The answer is alignment.
Alignment is the process of linking together
the organization's strategic goals
with the goals of each individual in the organization.
Every single worker needs to understand
which of the strategic goals they're supporting
and how their own activities help the organization
to be successful.
Let me give you an example.
After John F. Kennedy had declared that the U.S.
was going to the Moon, the President was visiting
the Space Center at Cape Canaveral.
He's reputed to have stopped a janitor
who was sweeping a floor and asked him what he was doing.
Why, Mr. President, the janitor said,
I'm putting a man on the Moon.
Now, even if that's just a story it's a great story
because it illustrates the direct connection
between a huge strategic goal, going to the Moon,
and one worker's contribution towards reaching that goal,
providing a clean environment for the work of others.
The same has to be true of every worker
in your organization.
They need to feel their connection
to the overall strategic goals.
There's a raft of approaches to aligning
organizations around strategic goals
from Six Sigma to the balance score card.
Here are three of the consistent requirements
across all of those approaches.
One, the organization's strategy
must be made known to every single worker,
no exceptions.
Anyone stopped in a hallway must be able to list
the organization's strategic goals.
Two, each division, department, and team
must role up to one or more of those strategic goals.
They need to see how their work directly flows
to those activities.
Three, every individual needs to have their own
deliverables tied to their team, department,
and division's goals, and those goals have to be
baked into the performance management process.
Now, that probably sounds like a very top down
hierarchical process with high level goals
defined by organizational leaders
and a linear set of connections
down to the rank and file.
But that's where agile processes come in.
Remember that the most strategically agile part
of any organization is a small atomic team of people
who are empowered to deliver great results.
That's why strategic goals need to focus on
the problems to be solved
and the results to be generated,
not the process by which they'll be achieved.
You'll find that people will accomplish far more
if every worker in the organization has done their homework
to understand their own unique skills and attributes
and to define their own personal goals.
The better each individual's goals are aligned
with the work they're performing
the more agile every individual worker will be.
Remember that empowerment doesn't come
through a process driven straight jacket.
It comes from giving people a clear idea
of what success looks like
and then getting out of their way.
Think of alignment as a loose, flexible,
and invisible network of goals
linking the entire organization
and empowering everyone in the organization
to contribute to its success.