Over a series of blogs, we will cover how misalignment can derail organizational strategies and best practices to achieve consensus and leadership alignment.
Do you have a strong, well-articulated strategy you believe your organization fully aligns to, but it just doesn’t seem to be working as intended? You aren’t alone – studies vary widely, but it’s well understood that less than half of organizational strategies are successfully implemented. One of the reasons strategies go off track is leadership alignment.
You can execute strategy more readily when leadership aligns on what they need to accomplish and how – and has a practice of clear communication and accountability to organizational objectives.
The Importance of Leadership Alignment
Think about strategy as a vector – it sets the direction and velocity for the changes you need to reach the desired destination.
If your leadership team isn’t aligned, it trickles down to the rest of the organization, and eventually, you have everyone moving at a different pace and in a slightly different direction toward the goal. When you have leadership alignment, you are more likely to move together.
Misaligned Leadership
Aligned Leadership
So, what does it look like when leadership is not aligned? Misalignment can show up in a variety of ways, some of which play out in visible actions like decision making and tactical activities. Others may be more subtle and involve how your leadership team interacts with each other and with their downline teams.
Driving change to your leadership alignment can be hard to do from within the organization. The pressure of daily delivery makes finding time for cross-enterprise understanding difficult, and company culture may minimize needed healthy debate.
Real-World Stories
Over a series of blogs, we will tackle some common ways we have seen leadership misalignment show up in client projects.
Some of the topics we will cover include:
- How you may have conflicting interpretations of the strategy.
- How your leadership team thinks and communicates.
- How objectives and rewards can drive misaligned leadership behaviors.
Read the Series
Strategy and Leadership Alignment: Choose Your Words Carefully — In this installment of our series, Matt Hawkins explains how misalignment often occurs because leadership might interpret strategy differently based on the communication style they prefer.