Aligning for success: Bridging the strategic gap in organizations of every size

Whether in a nimble startup or a global giant, aligning every level of the organization toward common goals is vital for overcoming the numerous challenges in today’s business world and achieving tangible results.

Many of us have come across it in the business world: the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Sometimes it happens when a company is growing too fast, or when it has merged with another organization. Sometimes it’s the result of external factors, such as a change in the economic and technological landscape. 

There are a number of ways it manifests, but a failure of organizational alignment on strategic initiatives is usually a prevalent symptom. 

Unfortunately, a lot of advice out there isn’t practical. The path to alignment that businesses need to take is dictated by where they are on their journey. When it’s just five people in a room, it’s pretty easy for everyone to be on the same page. But as organizations grow, driving alignment requires more rigor. The largest organizations, meanwhile, often find that driving alignment requires a change in structure and a broader mindset, and that can be a challenge.  

Every company is different, and every organization’s starting point for the path to alignment is different. However, I’d like to present a couple of anecdotes to show how you can get there. 

HOW SUCCESSFUL CAN YOU BE?  

A couple of years ago, my company found itself in this position. Even in the face of an uneven economic climate, sales were good. The interest in our product was strong. Pricing was well-accepted. We had a stellar engineering team. Headcount and hiring were up.

By lots of yardsticks, that’s success. But success is a floor, not a ceiling. We had to explore how successful we could be. We answered with stronger organizational alignment and strong execution, two areas we are still focused on to this day. 

We started by reviewing several financial and performance ratios. In some, we were best-in-class. Other ratios, on the other hand, weren’t bad, but they sat closer to the median for businesses of our type. Those metrics became our north star because they represented the best chance at improving the business overall. 

With those goals in mind, we set about developing a plan to reach them. Here’s what we did: 

First, we aligned team leaders from all departments, from marketing to customer success, with a clear roadmap linking individual actions to our goals. Second, we implemented regular review meetings to track progress toward our goals and adjusted plans as necessary. Third, we prepared for potential disruptions, such as key employee exits or economic changes, by proactively identifying and planning for possible scenarios.

By adhering to these principles, we developed an operating rhythm and set of goals using a framework we call our W2OKR (what, why, objectives, and key results) that allowed us to evaluate our execution and improve our performance weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. 

CORRECTING A MYOPIC STRATEGY

On the other end of the spectrum is the monumental task of driving change in a large organization. I recently talked with an executive at a large global corporation, one with more than 100,000 employees, who had been tasked with changing the organization’s alignment around risk and security. 

The organization had dozens of siloed groups, separated by region and function, and four different incident management systems. What the company didn’t have was a holistic view of events that might impact resiliency and business continuity, and no way to take coordinated action should those events turn into threats or risks to their business. The organization’s orientation was, in his words, “myopic.”  

The executive made two changes to guide the shift in mindset and reporting structure. He unified his view of the organization’s data, turning to key software solutions to serve as a centralized repository for incoming information. He also developed a comprehensive, years-long plan that identified numerous cross-functional initiatives that aligned with the goal of transformation, categorized by impact, budget, and outcome. That planning initiative allowed the executive to dial up and down the ambition of his plan according to resources, and to communicate the value of change to the C-suite. 

The effort has proven to be remarkably successful. While corporate security and risk management are never going to be seen as a profit center at most organizations, the holistic approach allowed the company to avoid multi-billion-dollar political risks and to develop early warning signals of supply chain disruptions during the early days of the COVID-19 crisis, for example. 

ALIGNMENT PROVES ITS VALUE

At the end of the day, organizational alignment drives the behaviors that are required to achieve a strategy. Imagine, for a moment, that an organization needs to explain poor operating results to its board. It can look at two things: the strategy or the execution. 

Without operational rigor, a company can’t tell if its strategy has failed. If the company’s execution is subpar, it may erroneously blame its strategy. But if execution is stellar, and the company still misses the mark, it’s a strong indicator that it’s time to adjust the strategy.

While a small organization may find driving alignment easier due to its agility, a larger organization faces the complex task of unifying disparate groups and systems to achieve a cohesive stance on risk and security. However, both situations highlight that alignment is key to navigating business complexities effectively. 

Whether in a nimble startup or a global giant, aligning every level of the organization toward common goals is vital for overcoming the numerous challenges in today’s business world and achieving tangible results.