Welcome to Friday 411, issue #089. In 4 minutes, with 1 insight and 1 action, you will drive alignment throughout your team.
1 Insight
Leaders deploy two types of alignment.
Corporate buzzwords are the worst. You know these words—like synergy, paradigm shift, efficiencies, bandwidth, toxic culture, and optimization.
We’re pretty sure that everyone hates them, but you still hear them dozens of times every week. Even more ironic: we all murmur in agreement when a leader uses one of these words to inspire the team to do better.
Someone says, “We need to look for opportunities to increase efficiencies,” and everyone compliantly nods their heads. Another person says, “It’s time for us to shift the paradigm of how we do business,” and everyone applauds.
Of all of these nefarious buzzwords, our least favorite is the word alignment. When leaders say this word, they usually mean: we need to get people moving in the same direction.
But there is a problem with that definition of alignment.
The Problems with Alignment
Actual alignment is great. The problem is with alignment the buzzword. It’s the same problems that all corporate buzzwords eventually develop:
First, buzzwords are overused to the point where they lose their meaning. You’ve seen this happen recently with “toxic culture.” So many people on LinkedIn bemoan their toxic cultures, the meaning of the term has become difficult to discern. (See this article for insights on what a toxic culture actually is).
Second, leaders use buzzwords to inspire people, but these words don’t move people to action. For example, everyone can agree that it’s important to “increase our bandwidth.” But, without a concrete plan to do so, no one does anything about it.
Alignment suffers from these buzzword problems. When you talk about alignment, it assumes that you, as the leader,
(1) see where you are suffering from misalignment;
(2) have created clear mental pictures of what you want to accomplish together;
(3) you know what each person needs to do to get there.
If those assumptions are not true, then the word “alignment” loses its significance. These are big assumptions, as evidenced by the research of Gallup. They found that only 22% of employees strongly agree their leaders have a clear direction for their organization.
Demystifying Alignment
Don’t get us wrong. It’s not that we believe alignment is not important. On the contrary, it’s absolutely critical for your team to succeed. What we mean is that you need to demystify what alignment means and clarify how to achieve it.
Alignment can cause confusion because there are actually two types of alignment:
- Organizational Alignment focuses on what we will achieve together as a team.
- Individual Alignment concentrates on what each person needs to contribute.
You can see this distinction in professional team sports. In order to win a championship, a team needs Organizational Alignment in all areas: players, coaches, front office, player development personnel, medical staff, training staff, marketing, sales and ticketing, etc. At the same time, each player and staff member requires Individual Alignment to understand their unique contribution to the goal of winning a championship.
Let’s dive into each of these separately to understand what you, as a leader, need to do to create both types of alignment.
Organizational Alignment
This first type of alignment clarifies what you want to achieve and how you’ll achieve it together. Organizational Alignment must occur throughout the entire company, as well as throughout each Group, Division, and Team. You have Organizational Alignment when everyone in the company becomes clear on (1) where we are headed as a company; (2) how we intend to get there; (3) what each person’s role is in getting there; and (4) why it’s important to get there.
In order to create and drive this type of alignment, leaders need to focus on 7 Levels of Clarity:
- Purpose: why does our company exist and how does it make the world a better place?
- Profits: how do we make enough money so that we can accomplish our purpose?
- Priorities: what are the most important outcomes our company must achieve?
- Plans: what projects and actions do we need to take in order to accomplish those priorities?
- People: how can we organize employees so that those plans can be accomplished?
- Processes: do we have clearly defined and followed procedures for repeated work we do?
- Problems: what significant challenges (real or potential) will get in the way of our processes, people, plans, and priorities?
This type of alignment requires that the Leadership Team creates these levels of Clarity and keeps talking about them constantly until it becomes engrained into the company.
But it’s not the only type of alignment you need to create.
Individual Alignment
The second type of alignment requires that each person understands what he is responsible for and how much authority he has to carry out those responsibilities.
While Organizational Alignment is about the team, Individual alignment is about the individual. It’s ensuring that each person on your team aligns to the specific projects and work you need that person to accomplish.
This type of alignment happens through effective delegation.
To drive Individual Alignment, delegate projects and outcomes to the individuals on your team. You can delegate effectively by creating clarity around:
- The outcome you’re delegating.
- The reasons this project is important.
- The criteria that will show this project is complete and successful.
- The degree of authority the person has in making decisions.
- The deadline for completing the project.
- The next actions that the person is accountable to accomplish.
Alignment is more than a buzzword. It takes hard work to create both Organizational and Individual Alignment. But creating these types of alignment saves you from the more difficult work of fixing misalignment.
1 Action
The next time someone in a meeting throws out the buzzword “alignment,” ask them which of the two types of alignment they mean and how they expect to achieve it.