Having spent a fair bit of time recently, working with a bunch of leadership teams and then also running sessions all about how to get more alignment.
I had a bit of a reflection, in a sense that it’s all good and well but what if it doesn’t translate into tangible impact. Seems obvious but given my own focus without really paying this the full attention it deserves I though this may be a good focus area for this month.
There may be an ‘Execution Gap’
Many organisations will tend to reach a moment where everything seems clear on paper. The business plan or strategy, which has clearly defined priorities, typically communicated by the senior leadership at an off-site does tend to get people excited and aligned. Then something happens, maybe it doesn’t.
I hear the language of maintaining momentum, often, but I do get a sense that we allow it to fade. The clarity of purpose that was created in a room, begins to disappear as leaders go back to their day-to-day realities and their usual habits. The alignment achieved in principle doesn’t translate into practice.
This is an execution gap.
Given this gap , we have an event lined up for November, aptly named, “Alignment to Impact”, we’re exploring how leaders can bridge the gap. Anyway enough about that, it felt like I should mention it there.
Alignment on its own, isn’t Enough
In the September drop, I wrote about the idea, “Is a Lack of Alignment Holding Back Your People Strategy?”, and explored why alignment matters. There was a model around the 3P’s of purpose, priorities, and principles that create the conditions for success. But alignment is only the start and can cause the illusion that we have it all covered.
On thinking around this idea of alignment it seems obvious but not all that common in practice that…Real business impact doesn’t come from alignment alone, it comes from what leaders do with it. If alignment is the agreement then Impact is the intentional action on that agreement (may be one way of putting it.
In fact if you think about that for a minute. A leader who has created strong alignment, who doesn’t then follow that through with intentional action could be described as like being stood in front of an open goal and weighing up whether to take a shot.
In my experience a high performing leadership team wouldn’t be checking the tick boxes on the strategy day completion, they would be using that as a catalyst to trigger an observable change in how they are living and breathing what that day represented.
It’s the difference between everyone knowing the plan and everyone owning it, and the people that really need to own it are the ones that created it IMO. Not following through on this, immediately is starting to pass the ball back towards your own half.
You need to demonstrate commitment
Once a leadership team is aligned around purpose and priorities, the next shift is into commitment. Commitment shows up in the small, visible ways leaders make choices that reinforce direction. What they start, stop, tolerate, and reward.
In coaching conversations with senior teams, I often surface questions a bit like this :
“Where does our alignment feel off, when the pressure rises?”
This can surface all sorts of challenges, often about competing loyalties, to functions, to comfort zones, to personal preferences. If this isn’t surfaced and dealt with it will inevitably undermine the great work you did in the first place as the signals will be evident, what we aligned on is not what we are doing right now. Without visible commitment, alignment becomes just an idea.
Your people engagement depends on this
If you’ve had these surveys going on and ever wondered what you need to do to improve, a huge part of the answer is in what we just relayed. Rather than thinking about HR creating a specific plan to action back into the different areas, this is an opportunity to get the mirror up and ask:
How have WE created alignment and how have WE embodied that in our daily actions?
Starting closer to home demonstrates strong leadership, looking at the problem being elsewhere demonstrates weak leadership.
The fact is, and I am still amazed when I see the opposite of this belief in action, ‘You can’t create engagement through communication alone’. People don’t just need clarity to ensure alignment, they need consistency as they will constantly be looking for re-enforcement of that direction you set. They need to see that what leaders say aligns with what they do.
I’ve been doing this kind of work at Get Knowledge for a while now and I know these questions aren’t easy, but they are the important questions and so here is a couple of sets…
Questions for Senior Leaders and their Leadership teams
For individual leaders….
What beliefs do you have around how to build and maintain alignment?
How do these relate to you vs others?
Where are you currently falling short as a leader and what are you going to do about it?
For leadership teams…
What are we noticing about how aligned our leadership behaviour still feels?
Where might our individual actions unintentionally create noise?
How do we know our people feel the impact of our alignment?