(upbeat music)
- Have you ever noticed how your body could feel,
well, out of kilter?
If you look at a doctor's image of your bone structure
and your major muscles, everything is ideally straight
and well-aligned, and your muscles are strong enough
to keep everything that way.
But if you're out of alignment,
you can feel like nothing's right.
You can't do anything that requires strength
and even moving in a straight line can be challenging.
Now, organizations need alignment too.
If the major functions of an organization aren't in sync,
then nothing in the organization can feel right either.
And organizations can have a much harder time
doing the things that require heavy lifting
or moving nimbly.
There are three critical questions that you need to ask
of any worker to understand how aligned people are,
or not, within your organization.
So you're walking down the hallway
and you see another person from the organization
walking towards you,
let's say it's Maricio from accounting.
You stop Muaricio and you say,
"What are the strategic goals of our organization?"
Now, if Mauricio gets them right, that's awesome,
give yourself five points.
Mauricio starts to walk away, but you stop him,
and now you ask your second question,
"Can you define your own personal goals
for the next three to six months?"
If Mauricio can list his own goals,
you get another five points.
Mauricio thinks he's done, he starts to walk away,
but you stop him one more time, and you ask,
"How do your personal goals map to the goals
of the organization?"
If Mauricio can define how his goals support
one or more of the organization's goals,
you're in a great position, five more points.
Congratulations, you very likely have
an aligned organization.
But if Mauricio couldn't answer any of your questions,
and believe me, that's pretty common, you lost 15 points.
Now stop two more people in the hallway,
ask them the same questions.
If nobody could answer any of them,
sorry, you've lost this round.
Now, you're responsible for helping your organization
to get in alignment.
First, you have to have a clearly defined set of goals
for the organization, goals that are continually adapted
to new market conditions.
Three high-level goals are good,
more than five is probably too many.
And they should be reasonably tactical.
What is the organization trying to accomplish
in the next, say, six months?
That ensures you'll be infusing a sense of urgency
into your goals, and you'll need to ensure those goals
are continually updated, at least once a quarter.
Next, you must communicate these goals to each division
and each group, every corner of the organization,
on an ongoing basis.
Bake an understanding of organizational goals
into each manager's regular communications
with their employees.
In fact, each manager should quiz every worker
on the strategic goals of the organization
on a regular basis.
Finally, every worker needs to connect those personal goals,
what many companies call objectives
and key results, or OKRs,
to one or more of the organization's strategic goals.
Now, you may not have the mandate to conduct alignment
across your entire organization.
If you're leading digital transformation
in your organization, start with alignment
with your IT department, because they're the key
to effective application of technology
in your change initiative.
If you're trying to build a culture of innovation,
your HR or learning department is your best friend
because they can touch every person in the organization
with training and with policies to help reinforce learning.
Perhaps though you're only responsible
for leading your team's transformation,
and your organization doesn't currently have a set
of widely communicated goals.
In that case, you may need to guess what you think
those goals would be.
Tell your manager what you've assumed they are.
Then ask your team members to align their personal goals
to those assumed goals for the organization.
Strategic alignment is critical for any change initiative.
Start with whatever part of the organization
you can influence
and grow your alignment process from there.
(upbeat music)