Organizational Alignment is hard to define and harder to master. Here’s a formula for building sustainable success.
As leaders and change agents, most of us have faced some common challenges:
- our vision of the future, clear in the past, has become cloudy
- goals and objectives, once clear and concise, have morphed into a complex tangle of competing priorities
- some team members have lost motivation and passion for the work
- stakeholders’ perceptions of where we are don’t match their expectations
- some team members have deep attachment to the status quo or fear of change
- some teams and team members have seemingly conflicting goals and agendas
- our customers (internal and external) seem difficult to satisfy and impossible to “wow”
- our processes aren’t enabling desired levels of performance and quality
- we seem to make many of the same mistakes over and over again, instead of learning from them
- it’s becoming increasingly hard to attract and retain the right people
- some of our metrics look good… but are they the right metrics?
In my experience, all of these can often be traced back to a lack of alignment. And a holistic approach to improving alignment can provide maximum leverage across many facets of the organization.
In my new eBook The P Principles Primer, I introduce a framework for assessing and improving alignment in any organization.
The P Principles include:
- Purpose – What we’re here to accomplish
- Passion – What our organization, and our people, care deeply about
- Products – What we make or do for our customers, and why they should buy it
- Priorities – The most important things we need to focus on right now
- Plans – How we’re going to get from where we are, to where we need to be
- Practices – How we communicate with and enable our teams to be effective
- Processes – How we organize and optimize the work we do together to produce value for our customers
- Performance – How we measure, incentivize and improve the performance of our teams and individuals
By evaluating and improving alignment in these eight dimensions, organizations can simultaneously improve their short-term results, their long-term viability, and the engagement and satisfaction of their stakeholders.
I’m working on a full-length book, to be released soon, that explores these Principles in detail, as well as additional strategies for attaining them. But I decided to release this “primer” now, so my readers can begin applying these concepts immediately… for immediate results!
In the eBook, I discuss common challenges to organizational alignment, and actionable strategies for improving and maintaining alignment.
Get your FREE copy now, using the simple request form on this page!