Understanding organization alignment

When organizations struggle to execute their strategies effectively, they usually have problems in at least one of four areas: Alignment, Ability, Architecture, or Agility. This is commonly referred to as the 4A framework created by Scott Snell and Kenneth Carrig.

According to the Center for Management & Organization Effectiveness, organizational alignment is the process of creating unity between the company’s ultimate vision of success and the way leaders and individual contributors drive business results.

So, what does this mean for strategy execution? If organizations want to effectively execute their strategy, they need to ensure that everyone is working together towards the same goal. Research shows that CEOs and leadership teams state that alignment is the most important factor when it comes to strategy execution, as well as the first one that needs to be addressed to improve performance (Carrig and Snell, 2019). This is because, without alignment, there is no clarity of purpose or direction.

It’s easy for siloed organizations to encounter alignment problems because it’s all too often that leaders, managers, and employees within each of the silos become overly focused on their silo and lose sight of how their efforts contribute to the organization as a whole.

This is where systems and processes, such as operations performance management, can help enable an organization to create alignment. Effective operations performance management provides clarity and a sense of purpose. It enables personnel at every level of the organization to easily understand the goals of the company, what their role is in achieving those goals, and how their contributions affect the overall growth of the business. Simply put, effective operations performance management creates organizational alignment.

Additionally, at a time when many businesses have shifted to incorporate remote work, it is imperative that effective communication and leadership are in place to ensure that everyone understands the organization’s vision and how their work meaningfully contributes to it.

At Cicero, we help organizations achieve alignment by first identifying core goals, analyzing appropriate data, and defining leading indicators and key business performance metrics.

We then work with your leadership team to identify the optimal operational performance objectives and develop an operations performance framework to effectively balance competing objectives.

Typically, we will develop customer, strategic, financial, and employment measures that will provide an ongoing overall understanding of your business – in real-time.

By creating a clear and relevant framework, as well as effectively communicating that framework to the rest of the organization, organizations can achieve greater alignment, which will lead to improved strategic execution and overall better performance.