One of the most common ailments in business today is a lack of alignment.  Below we discuss Business Alignment Strategies to recognize and correct business alignment.

• Identifying the absence of Business Alignment Strategies
• The link between Accountability and Business Alignment
• Ensuring Your Business Alignment Strategies
• How to Improve Your Business Alignment Strategies
• Ensuring Accountability as part of your Business Alignment Strategy
• How Goals and Objectives contribute to your Business Alignment Strategy
• Three Things to Remember about Business Alignment Strategies

Identifying the Absence of Business Alignment Strategies

If you suspect that Business Alignment Strategies in your organization may be lacking, here are some symptoms:

• Do you have orphan projects or initiatives?  Are there projects or initiatives that seem to be completely disconnected from the rest of your business, or that just don’t seem to fit in?
• Do you have zombie problems or projects?  If you are sure that a project has been killed multiple times, but seems to keep coming back from the dead, you may have a lack of alignment.
• Direct reports that are not clear on their leaders accountabilities or goals.  Ask any employee what is most important to his/her boss.  If there are unclear or conflicting answers, it could be because of a lack of alignment.
• Continuous lack of improvement.  Is the business treading water, and not improving over time?
• Managers are reaching down into the organization to do the work that should be done by the people who report to them (or even lower).

The link between Accountability and Business Alignment

Business Alignment cannot be achieved without clear accountability in an organization.  Here are some definitions:

Alignment: Linking of organizational goals with team goals, and ultimately with the employees’ individual goals, actions and activities.

Accountability: The obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.

Ensuring Your Business Alignment Strategies

Goals must cascade clearly between all levels in an organization.  All goals of individual contributors must be supported by development plans as well:

How to Improve Your Business Alignment Strategies

There are three core reasons your Business Alignment Strategies may not be working:

• Execution
• Quality
• Quantity

Execution – are you cascading your departmental goals?  Are you transferring them into individual goals/objectives for your team members?  Or, do you not execute this and hope everyone knows what’s truly important?  People will not know their role in achieving results unless goals are properly cascaded.

Quality – Are all goals SMART, clear, and aligned with the larger organizational goals?  Or are they vague, not tied to a specific outcome or measure and without a deadline?

Quantity – is this a once a year exercise to keep the HR people off your back, or do you talk often about what is expected, how people are doing and what they can do to get even better?

Ensuring Accountability as part of your Business Alignment Strategy

If accountability around goals is critical to ensuring alignment, then you need to ensure that accountability is achieved.  The best way to do this is use existing meetings to refine and discuss progress against goals.

How Goals and Objectives contribute to your Business Alignment Strategy

• Drives focus and alignment through the organization on what’s most important.
• Closes the gap between Strategy and Execution.
• Helps define and drive performance.
• Clarifies priorities.

Watch the ’3-Minute Crash Course’ about Business Alignment Strategies Note: The full length ‘Business Alignment Strategies’ video (15 minutes) is available in the members-only area below.  Become a member today!

Learn Even More About ‘Business Alignment Strategies’

Wily Manager members, click here to access the members-only area for this topic (you must be logged in).  In the members-only area, you can:

• Watch the full length ‘Business Alignment Strategies’ Video (15 minutes)
• Download the ‘Business Alignment Strategies’ Video (mp4)
• Download the ‘Business Alignment Strategies’ Audio (mp3)
• Download the ‘Business Alignment Strategies’ Slides (ppt)
• Print or save the ‘Business Alignment Strategies’ Cheat Sheet (pdf)
• Click through to Related Topics:
  • SMART Goals and HARD Goals
  • Aligning Mission, Vision & Goals
  • How to Set Goals and Objectives

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