Strategic Alignment is Critical to High Performance

In business, we measure success by the bottom line; or as I've heard some people put it, "we keep score with dollars." When you get right down to it, profit represents the combination of drive, work, and efficiency we call high productivity. Staying busy isn't enough; we have to stay busy at what matters, in ways that move us toward well-defined goals and objectives.

I've dedicated my 20-year career to helping my corporate clients improve employee performance and execute on strategy. I've stressed the value of time management skills, productivity training, to-do lists, task triage, and avoiding distractions. I've pointed out how individual empowerment, effective teamwork, and a positive workplace atmosphere all contribute to the kind of employee engagement that yields high levels of both productivity and profit. All of these topics are important.

But sometimes you have to go back to basics to really understand some key principles that lay the foundation for all work that occurs in a company--a basic business reality that, while often forgotten, governs all levels of productivity at work--the need for strategic alignment.

Top to Bottom

Good strategic alignment consists of practices that connect organizational strategy with employee performance as fully and as directly as possible. When you properly align your organizational structure, all employees act as strategic enablers of business, company policy, mission, and vision, working from the same standards toward the same ends. This can only happen when upper management willingly shares its goals with everyone and sets up procedures to make sure everyone stays on track.

Once-a-year performance reviews just don't cut it. On the other hand, too much day-to-day control can become micromanagement--the exact opposite of productivity. In any case, performance reviews relate specifically to one person's job, not company strategy as a whole. So how do you find a happy medium? How do you connect each employee's execution of their work to the organization's overall vision, in order to create a comfortable level of strategic alignment resulting in profit, growth, and all-around business success? How do you ensure that each employee, sitting at his/her desk, is working on exactly what they should be doing to drive successful strategy execution?

Communication, Education, and Oversight = Alignment

A successful alignment effort includes three components: communication, education, and oversight. Like a three-legged stool, all three legs support and reinforce the others. Weakness or failure in any destabilizes the entire effort; however, strength in all three provides a solid structure upon which to build.

Read the rest of the article here.

Make it a productive day! ^(TM)

© Copyright 2012 Laura Stack.  All rights reserved. www.TheProductivityPro.com

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MBWA

Back in the 1940s, two electronics pioneers named Bill Packard and Dave Hewlett founded a company that (after a coin-toss) they named Hewlett-Packard. Now famous among the general public for their top-notch computer equipment, Hewlett-Packard enjoys nearly as much fame in business circles for their open management style: the so-called "HP Way." Their method includes a surprisingly simple element called MBWA--short for "management by walking around."

The name aptly describes the process. Rather than spending all his or her time closeted in an office, the manager occasionally wanders around the workplace visiting with individual workers, talking with them about their work-related concerns. This encourages a closer relationship with the workforce and helps the manager find ways to increase workplace productivity. In their 1982 book In Search of Excellence, Robert Waterman and Tom Peters gave the concept a boost when they identified it as a common practice among the world's best-run companies.

The name aptly describes the process. Rather than spending all his or her time closeted in an office, the manager occasionally wanders around the workplace visiting with individual workers, talking with them about their work-related concerns. This encourages a closer relationship with the workforce and helps the manager find ways to increase workplace productivity. In their 1982 book In Search of Excellence, Robert Waterman and Tom Peters gave the concept a boost when they identified it as a common practice among the world's best-run companies.

How you handle the details and intensity of your MBWA rounds is up to you. While most managers set aside a few hours here and there for it (a reasonable timeframe), some go all out. According to recent reports, the late Steve Jobs liked to take technical support calls at Apple Computers. Similarly, Abraham Lincoln personally inspected randomly chosen Union Army units early in the Civil War.

While the Jobs/Lincoln approach might be too much of a time investment for you, give MBWA some thought and see if you can't fit it into your management style. It motivates your employees when you talk to them one-on-one, and makes you seem more sympathetic and less isolated from their concerns than might otherwise be the case. Even better, it shows your people you care about more than just the bottom line.

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Thanks,

Laura

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