The Line On Alignment
Consistently putting strategy into action is a challenge for large organisations. Connecting day to day actions to the high level objectives provides a solution.
An organisation's day to day behaviours are more often a reflection of where they've been rather than where they are going. When the road forward takes a sudden turn you may find yourself 'in the dirt' and wondering why 'turn left here' didn't produce the desired result.
Lining up our day to day actions with our long term goals is as essential for organisations as it is for individuals. By refocussing our energies away from actions that don't promote the result we want to things that do, we can achieve more results for the same effort.
This doesn't have to be an exhausting process of navel gazing. Some very simple techniques applied intelligently can help assemble the elephant from apparently random collection of trunks, ears, tails etc. Once we can all see we are talking about a living elephant we can better assess where we stand (or shouldn't stand).
The linkages need to be established in steps so that the connection between each level is intuitive and not a leap of faith. The single most important factor in creating alignment between the goals and actions is to keep the language in simple terms that anyone can follow. So that the myriad of day to day decisions can be made in context.
Keep It Simple To Get It Right
