Alignment Dysfunction? Try these 4 Operating Principles.
One of the most common frustrations I encounter when working with senior executives (especially in scale-ups) is around the challenge of "getting and keeping people aligned".
Every quarter or half, there is a new set of goals, a new framework of metrics and a new round of projects and to-do lists across the company to keep track of. And a new set of messaging required to make it feel consistent even though it's changed, yet again.
Maybe you're lucky and you get a well-thought-out plan put together. Or maybe you stumbled across the deadline with nothing but a high level outline. In either case, inevitably, things immediately drift. Departments start doing things that weren't on the list. And not doing things that were on the list. Executives swoop in with directives or to lead emergency triage to try to re-coordinate and re-focus the teams, or to reassess the goals. Leaders might get put in the hot seat - accused of not doing their jobs or at least doing them well. All of this happening in a constant dust storm of 're-aligning'.
A former colleague once aptly called this phenomenon of everyone racing to the ball "four year old soccer".
Even with small victories, even when you manage to kick that ball that one time, there is the nagging feeling that when your teams and executives are doing this, they're not getting the real work done.
The key is to realize that Alignment is not static and Alignment is not local.
Alignment is combinatorial, distributed and dynamic.
Which is why it is so hard, and why it seems that every small victory creates several more problems down the line.
Because Alignment is part of a living system, it is important to understand all of the forces that push toward or against it, and to turn those forces into operating principles across the company. By adhering to the principles, you end up with a system that has a fighting chance to stay in equilibrium - to reach that holy grail of self-correcting, global and consistent alignment.
Here's what I've found works.
The 4 Principles
In Let Your Teams Say WTF?! I wrote about what I wanted my teams to be able to say under my leadership:
I had been mulling these over for a while and found myself trying to convey what operating principles these reflect during an executive strategy meeting. I don't know where it came from but I suddenly heard myself distilling them to the team into the following four (I'll take a moment to thank the whispers of my inner HR muse). They are:
Alignment
Alignment refers simply to having your outcomes serving the broader outcomes of the business. It means having a direction and an objective that is clear and measurable.
Alignment depends on the business coordinating priorities properly between teams so that nothing one team does creates headwinds to another.
Nothing new here if you've ever encountered OKRs, Vision to Value or V2MOMs.
But there's more - Alignment means more than strategic direction; it also means governance.
This means establishing clearly defined workflows and dependencies between departments so work can be seamlessly handed off between groups with quality and timeliness, and so departments can be resourced to deliver work at a coordinated pace and their required roles can be filled with the appropriate skill sets.
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In this framing, governance simply means Alignment of the company's operations - who does what, when, and in what order, and what good looks like for each deliverable.
Empowerment
Once you have Alignment, Empowerment is all about setting people free to choose the how. It is about delegation and trust.
But it is not simply set and forget.
There are a lot of hows. Each one reflects a different mix of risk, investment and time frames for learning and delivery. Identifying opportunities requires a constant rebalancing of the strategy and investment based on what you are learning not only on one team, but across the company as a whole.
So your departments are empowered to create the how, and also to develop them with the company to choose which is the right how for their deliverable.
Through Empowerment, you recognize that Alignment flows in both directions and requires a culture of Accountability.
Accountability
When people see this word, they immediately think of "who is on the hook - and holding them to it". I take the controversial position that delivering on a commitment requires something much deeper. It requires the ability to "account" for what you are doing from planning to execution to delivery.
This requires great tooling. Which requires clear workflows and roles. Great tooling and consistent process generates actionable data - how long are things taking, how much are they costing, who might be impacted and when - and what corrective action can we take now, at every level, if needed?
The act of putting these in place and running your systems well is what makes you Accountable - at any time, you can point directly to what you will do, what you are doing, and what you have done.
Iteration
Every cycle at every level of every workflow presents an opportunity to learn. Iteration is simply taking the time to be thoughtful about the next time. The better your accounting, empowerment and alignment, the more effective you can be at finding opportunities to grow, change and improve.
Premier League Level Alignment
Alignment is dynamic and global. It depends on clear company objectives, established interdepartmental workflows, and measurable processes and tooling to signal how each piece of the strategic portfolio is doing.
Alignment cannot stand alone - it needs Empowered teams, systems of Accountability, and Iteration to continually rebalance the investments of the company to achieve an optimal balance and rate of deliveries across each department as a cohesive whole.
This results in a culture of active participation at all levels with consistent presence, curiosity and empathy, driven by disciplined practice and meaningful data, coordinated to impactful outcomes.
How would you see these principles changing the way you work?
What would be the biggest challenges for you and your teams?
