You may have heard this title phrase many times before. But have you thought about it? The implication for leaders is: By not involving your whole team in addressing challenges you are choosing to sub-optimize your performance. Why would anyone choose that? Leaders often rely too heavily on their own inherently limited views of a…
Each of us sees things from our unique perspective. We understand the world around us through an unconscious thought process. We constantly form and update beliefs and values that we apply to assess the situation, formulate alternatives, make decisions and interpret the intentions of others. But since we are constrained by our own experience, our…
Successful leaders understand the real cost of not having everyone in synch — and they are quick to address gaps in understanding or commitment that create a drag on performance. Upfront group alignment can ensure delays don’t derail plans and financial commitments. But what’s the benefit of investing in group alignment? The following examples quantify…
When do leaders need help from outside experts? Generally when change is needed: either a new initiative requiring focused attention or when things are “stuck” using existing approaches. For completely new activities they may need specialized technical expertise, but more often than not the constraints are not about information or know-how, rather about effectively addressing…
Recently I have had some interesting conversations about the importance of Leadership and Culture in strategy execution. Their influence can be best understood when considered together with Alignment. Recognizing Alignment as critical in predicting successful strategy execution does’t imply that Leadership or Culture are less important. But rather, understanding Alignment (the degree of “shared understanding”)…
Making stone soup starts with a stone. After that everyone has a chance to add something that slowly cooks and melds with what others have added. Creating a vision is like making stone soup. The soup will be better when some of each type of available ingredient have been added. These inputs need to be…
Sometimes things don’t come out quite the way we would have liked. This is often true when work requires collaboration with other people. Problems can come up midstream in the pursuit of an important goal because the other people you rely on for support typically won’t fully commit to things they don’t understand and also…
The process for strategy management has not changed much in recent decades. Typically, organizations do some sort of situation assessment, followed by a step to develop and select options, followed by a deployment or implementation phase, and finally monitoring. These steps are fundamentally the same for all organizations that undertake a deliberate strategy management process,…
The use of the term alignment in business is relatively new, but quickly growing. Two decades ago alignment was typically used in the context of IT systems. Today it is often applied more generally to describe ‘re-alignment’ of business strategies — for example, strategic alignment, portfolio alignment, organizational alignment, and stakeholder alignment. In the context…
In the past few days I’ve talked to several executives across industries about alignment. “How does your organization achieve alignment?” “What are the consequences of ignoring misalignment?” “Who drives the group alignment process?” One conversation involved the CIO of a company with sales of about $1 billion. He’s not sure who should initiate the alignment…
