strategic alignment with aligncomm

Strategic Alignment

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Static Dynamic

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A Seamless Culture

of Shared Purpose

The Goal of Strategic Alignment

“Well aligned companies outperform their competitors on every major financial measure.”

Harvard Business School Research

“Alignment is the essence of management” Fred Smith, FedEx

The Reality

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53% of people don’t feel their company strategy will lead to success … Booz & Company

80% of employees would leave if given the opportunity

… The Economist

70% of the time the problem is not bad strategy but bad execution … Fortune

90% of companies implement their strategy ineffectively … Kaplan and Norton

73% of workers don’t believe they are supporting company strategy

… Duncan Worldwide

85% of CEOs believe strategic changes are not well implemented … Grolman Group

Looking for Alignment - The key questions

1. What is our strategy? 2. What do you do? 3. How does what you do support the strategy?

Common Symptoms of Poor Alignment

• High turnover and low morale

• Passive-aggressive behavior

• Inability to articulate strategy

• Reduced accountability

• Sub-optimal teamwork

• Little upward information flow

• Fragmentation and duplication

• Inappropriate or misguided initiative

• Short-term focus on results

• Team goals trump corporate strategy

• Institutional apologists

• Lack of Innovation

• ‘Quit but still showing up’ syndrome

• Indeterminate ‘referred’ pain

The Cost of Employee Turnover

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The Seven Deadly Sins

1. The job was not as expected (35% of workers that quit, quit within first year)

2. Mismatch between job and person (60% of employees are not using talents)

3. Feelings of devaluation, lack of recognition and insufficient resources

4. Insufficient growth prospects (ranks lowest 67/67 of mgmt. competencies)

5. Too little coaching and feedback (60% employees claim insufficient feedback)

6. Lack of trust and confidence in senior leaders (esp. pay disparity)

7. Stress and overwork (40% of US workers say their job is stressful)

Source: The Center for Association Leadership

http://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/EUArticle.cfm?ItemNumber=11514

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Job Title Cost to rehire

Executive 3 to 5 times annual salary

Manager 1 to 3 times annual salary

Hourly worker 50% of annual salary

The Cost of Employee Turnover

HBR and other sources

Voluntary 2010 attrition rate ~ 16% (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Example:

A 1000 person company will pay ~$10M to rehire from voluntary quits

Question: How much would greater alignment have saved them?

AlignComm

On average, employee turnover costs 9% of total revenue

Mercer

Answer: Between 20% and 40%

Employee engagement a pre-requisite to correct alignment

Engagement is the outcome of one’s personal

• Satisfaction • Commitment • Pride • Loyalty • Sense of purpose

• Advocacy • Initiative • Persistence • Energy

Engagement and the Bottom line

A 50% spread in observed performance

Companies with high levels of People engagement improved 19.2% Companies with low levels of People engagement declined 32.7%

Towers Watson

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Wealth Creation The EPS growth rate of organizations with engagement scores in the top quartile was 2.6 times greater than organizations

with below• average scores. Gallup (survey of 89 organizations)


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Safety

Those with engagement scores in the bottom quartile averaged 62% more accidents.

Gallup


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Productivity Engaged people are consistently more productive, profitable, safer, healthier, and 87% less likely to leave their employer.

Corporate Leadership Council & Fleming & Apslund


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Engaged teams are not enough. They must also be aligned to the goals of the entire organization.

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But …

Aligned teams

Know there’s a plan Understand the plan Agree with the plan Buy into the plan Energize the plan

Looking for Alignment The key questions

• Is the strategy clear and well-communicated, and the

priorities understood by all? • Is the leadership team aligned to deliver clear and

unambiguous direction? • Do the processes work efficiently, or are there built-in

conflicts? • Do I have a clear understanding of the needs, by each

demographic, of our people ? • What do customers say, and how does it impact attrition,

retention and overall profitability and sustainability?

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It is necessary to measure alignment quantitatively

The Axes of Alignment

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Process Customer

Strategy

People

Horizontal Alignment

• Eliminating boundaries between

company and customer

• Understanding, creating, delivering and

supporting customer needs

• Value creation throughout supply chain

• Clearly differentiated and synergistic

functional responsibilities

Vertical Alignment

• The rapid and efficient deployment of

business strategy throughout the

organization

• Employee engagement and strategic buy-

in through consistent communication

• Two-way flow of information through

empowered employees

• Enabled by measurable and actionable

metrics

Challenges of Horizontal Alignment

• Customer requirements change

• Customer voice hard to interpret

• Customers speak in present tense

• Few employees have direct interaction

• Understanding the customer is rarely a

collective responsibility

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Horizontally aligned companies create a

shared reality with their customers

Big Five Questions on Customer Focus

• What do our customers care about the most

• What opportunities do we have to delight

• How well are we satisfying them now

• What are the “best-of-the-best” competitors

doing

• What do we do to make us “difficult to do

business with?”

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Horizontally aligned companies use the

voice of their customers as their beacon

The Self-Aligning Company

• Invisible hand of culture

• Adjustments made quickly at all levels

• Organization senses needs and changes

• Distributed leadership

• Disciplined enough to continually monitor

the internal and external worlds

• Do the right things right and concentrate

on key metrics only

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• Be broad enough so everyone can understand their individual contribution • Unify the organization – its culture, systems and processes • Be future based and customer oriented

Key metrics must:

Survey Analyze Diagnose Adjust

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Steps to Align an Organization

Value of Alignment Analysis

• Develops long- and short-term action plans

• Pinpoints areas requiring management attention

• Launches improvement initiatives • Identifies skill gaps • Isolates best and worst practices • Distributes effective leadership • Aligns people, processes and

strategies with market opportunities

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Process Customer

Strategy

People

Why this assessment differs from traditional employee surveys?

1. Provides immediately tactical guidance

2. A local management tool for greater alignment to local customers

3. Comparative, quantifiable and prescriptive analytics

4. Readiness measured in the context of interdependent teams

5. Prioritized and actionable realignment recommendations

6. Identification of local barriers such as skill and coverage gaps

7. Quick, focused, digestible and of immediate value

8. Actionable within a few days of survey launch

9. Easily extensible for broader usage

10. Isolation of revenue risks and potential partner leverage

Overall Alignment Index “The Main Thing”

Category

“Critical Success Factors”

Dependent Factor

“Key Indicators”

Survey

Questions

Q1

Q2

Q3

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Powerful Alignment Analytics

“The best business tool in America” Andy Greig, Division President, Bechtel Corp

Team 2 Team 1 Team 3

Comparative Alignment Dashboard

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Radar Diagrams Predictive Matrices of

Correlated Dependencies

And many, many more 24


Personality Situation Behaviour Performance

Management behaviour may also need to be aligned to the working situation. The AlignComm Behavioural Alignment Instrument gets to the root causes of misaligned managers.

Conjoint analysis, nongameable through evasion factors

Identifies the 20 behaviors that drive 80% of performance

Each job is different, so to be managed effectively requires a

specific and unique set of behaviors

Questionnaire has high validity of 0.992 and reliability

of 0.933 as reported by the London School of Economics

Accurate

Powerful

Validated

Powerful

Validated

Powerful

Validated

Powerful

Situational

Validated

Behavior Alignment Instrument

Vision, change, increasing effectiveness, and driving things forward

Consistency, efficiency, implementation, attention to detail and maintaining quality

Responsibility avoidance, conflict avoidance, or anger and annoyance.

Accelerating

Sustaining

Blocking

Three Primary Behavior Modalities Measured

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Behavior Alignment Example of aggregated data report

Return on Alignment

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The trademarked AlignComm methodology to

aggregate, evaluate and prioritize remediation

alternatives to determine which have the

greatest impact on business results

AlignComm

• Strategic planning support and guidance • Workshops and seminars • Alignment and engagement surveys • Executive coaching • Behavioral Alignment diagnostics for managers • Return on Alignment ® modeling for remediation

prioritization • Messaging frameworks and collateral

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strategic alignment with aligncomm

Documents