Alignment requires clear and concise communication and the coordination of multiple activities across the business and its fundamental activities. Whether you are a sole trader or owner of a business with a team, you’ll need to align others and orientate them to the business, the direction it’s going and its velocity towards getting there. Alignment is the glue between the people, the plan and purpose which equals higher levels of productivity in delivery.
During my military service alignment played an absolutely critical element in any operational deployment. Alignment was established with clear and concise delivery of orders; the plan. There would be a clear and concise explanation of the environment where the operation would be taking place. The mission would take centre stage and as such would be verbally repeated twice when delivering verbal orders.
The mission was the ultimate in establishing alignment with the soldiers (the purpose) and tasks and responsibilities would be assigned to ensure alignment of the people, actions and effects required on the field of operation. All this would then be discussed and explained in terms of the operation execution.
Critical in achieving orientation is gaining orientation in where you are heading. Being really clear of the direction you are travelling and the destination. Interestingly this is often a very difficult aspect of setting alignment. Either having completely lost sight of where you are heading or having never established it. Before you can really align you first must have clarity yourself. If you don’t know where and what you aim to achieve there is no way you’ll be able to align your team. There are 3 questions I like to ask which will encourage you to reflect on why you are where you are and remind you why you got into business.
- If you were to know what your business would look like when it’s done what would that be?
- Where are you now?
- What has been getting in the way and slowing you down?
So the first step is to align yourself with the business or in some cases ‘back’ into the business. Essentially this will orientate you back into your business.
Interestingly you’ll need to make sure you and everyone with you, both your external team and internal team understand and have focused and coordinated effort. For a small business or sole trader it will be ensuring your external team, that is your accountant, marketer, IT support, coach and other external support elements understand where you are heading and their part within the strategic picture and the tactics they need to deliver for you.
For businesses with employees, their own teams, you’ll need to be aligning them. External or internal there are challenges with alignment. How do you ensure everyone is in tune with the strategic direction of the business, understand the part they play and most importantly are able to deliver it? It’s also about the unity of effect, making sure everyone is pulling in the right direction, understand the part they play and why it’s critical to the overall success.
So what are the key areas which need to be aligned? Having highlighted the need for you to be aligned with your vision you need to be able to relate this to your team. As previously mentioned the mission will be one of the most succinct methods of aligning people.
A mission will give your team purpose and the ability to think on their feet knowing that as long as any decision is aligned to the mission they can rest assured they will be supporting the business. You can also add further value by offering a vision statement, the long term picture, also outlining the expected behaviours within the business in the form of the values.
From here you can bring the alignment down to a workable time frame and set the goals and objectives for the next 12 months, break them down to quarterly goals and even weekly. Truly aligning effort and results.
In tune with this and probably the driver will be setting the plan. Now, this isn’t merely an idea in your head this is a contemplated and written plan of action. The plan is often the weakest part of alignment with no thought given to the coordination and execution of actions and activities. If you will, the strategic overview of just how the tactics will be delivered.
Getting and staying aligned in business is critical to the growth of the business. To remaining on track and taking ownership of what needs to be done. If you are a business owner who spends more time IN the business then getting aligned will make a significant difference to your productivity and that of your external and or internal team. Get aligned.
Now there’s a challenging thought!
If you’d like to take the first step towards getting aligned then why not get in touch for a personal business alignment session?
