Discover how to enhance decision-making in your organization by focusing on three crucial areas: solving the right problem, gathering all the available information, and understanding the intent. Learn to empower your team, foster a purpose-driven culture, and improve organizational clarity for better decision-making.
Align and Thrive: The Importance of Organizational Alignment and Agility
Introduction: The Need for Alignment in Agile Growth Companies
During a recent conversation with a fellow professional, the topic of organizational alignment arose. For a company to grow and adapt, it must be aligned, with all activities reinforcing its objectives. Alignment begins with the CORE – Core Values, Core Purpose, Core Customer, Brand Promise, and Profit/X, and these elements form the foundation upon which everything else is built.
Building Strategy Around Your Core
Once the CORE is established, you can develop a strategy that includes your Flywheel, BHAG, 3HAG, and 13-Week Sprints. The strategy should be based on the CORE without contradicting any of its elements. With a solid strategy, execution then focuses on achieving the targets set out in the strategy.
The Pitfalls of Misaligned Goals
Many companies set Core Values, a five-year plan, and annual goals but fail to align these with their CORE. This misalignment can result in pursuing revenue at the expense of profitability or prioritizing profit to the detriment of essential investments in people, processes, and equipment. Such scenarios are common in Corporate America and often wrongly attributed to short-termism.
The Power of Alignment and Agility
Alignment and agility are crucial for sustainable growth. When a company is aligned, its activities reinforce its Flywheel, target Core Customers, meet customer needs, deliver products and services efficiently, fulfill the Brand Promise, and achieve the Profit/X goal.
Agility enables an organization to respond effectively to a changing world. In an ever-changing environment, decision-making must be pushed to where the information is. Proper decision-making can only happen when the decision-maker knows the organizational intent (Strategy) and the framework for making that decision (CORES).
Conclusion: Aligning Your Organization for Success
To achieve the growth and success you seek, identify your CORES and develop a strategy accordingly. Ensure that everything in your organization aligns with these CORES, and you will be well on your way to thriving in an ever-changing business landscape.
Recent Posts
Boosting Common Sense Decision-Making in Your Organization
Do You Understand Your Costs to Ensure Profitability?
You can only determine profitability when you know your costs. I’ve discussed before that you should price according to value, not hours. However, you still need to know your costs to understand the minimum pricing and how it is performing. Do you consider each jobs’ profitability when you price new jobs? Do you know what you should be charging to ensure you hit your profit targets? These discussions about a company’s profitability, and what measure drives profit, are critical for your organization.
Sunk Costs Are Just That, Sunk!
If you were starting your business today, what would you do differently? This thought-provoking question is a valuable exercise, especially when it brings up the idea of “sunk costs” and how they limit us. A sunk cost is a payment or investment that has already been made. Since it is unrecoverable no matter what, a sunk cost shouldn’t be factored into any future decisions. However, we’re all familiar with the sunk cost fallacy: behavior driven by a past expenditure that isn’t recoupable, regardless of future actions.
Do You REALLY Know Your Business Model?
Bringing clarity to your organization is a common theme on The Disruption! blog. Defining your business model is a worthwhile exercise for any leadership team. But how do you even begin to bring clarity into your operations? If you’re looking for a place to start, Josh Kaufman’s “Five Parts of Every Business” offers an excellent framework. Kaufman defines five parts of every business model that all flow into the next, breaking it down into Value Creation, Marketing, Sales, Value Delivery, and Finance.
Ideation! Harder Than It Sounds
Bringing in new ideas, thoughts, understanding, and logic is key as your organization faces the challenges of a changing environment. But when you do an ideation session in your organization… how does it go? For so many organizations, many times, after a few ideas have been thrown out and rejected, the thought process slows down very quickly, and a form of hopelessness takes over. How does your organization have better ideation? I’ve come across a new approach with a few teams lately.
Recruit, Recruit, Recruit!
An uptick in business has begun this quarter, and companies are rushing to hire to meet this surge in demand. What amazes me is how many are so unprepared to hire. Continual recruiting is key to the survival of a company. It isn’t the same thing as hiring—continuous recruiting is building a pipeline of people that you would hire if you needed to fill a position, or “A players” you would hire if they were available.
We All Need Clarity
If your organization is focused on obscurity over clarity, whether intentionally or not, your “A” player employees are vulnerable. There is a looming talent crunch. As we start to emerge from COVID, demand is increasing, and many are scrambling to fill positions to meet that demand. Headhunters and recruiters are soon going to be calling your key “A” employees. Have you been giving them a reason to stay?
Not Another **** Meeting
As Leonard Bernstein put it so well, “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.” Your meetings can be shorter, more fruitful, and engaging, with better outcomes for the organization, employees, and managers. It’s time to examine your meeting rhythms and how you set meeting agendas. This week, I break down daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, and individual meeting rhythms, with sample agendas for each.
Is Your Company Scalable?
Let’s start here: Why should your company be scalable at all? If your business is scalable, you have business freedom–freedom with time, money, and options. Many business leaders get stuck in the “owner’s trap”, where you need to do everything yourself. Sound familiar? If you want a scalable business that gives you freedom, you need to be intentional about what you sell, and how.
Are you ready for the Talent Crunch?
Companies are gearing up to hire. Unfortunately, many are competing within the same talent pool. Some experts are currently predicting a strong economic recovery starting in May or June. But as the economy booms, there is going to be fierce competition for talent. How will you fare in the looming talent crisis? Your organization should be creating a plan, now, so you can attract the talent you need in the year ahead.
