Let us look at the first challenge in getting organizational alignment - Communicating vision and objectives.
Organization's vision statement should come from the very top and be incorporated in every employees function.
The first step of course is to have a vision and come out with a vision statement. Sounds very simple, and yet so many organizations get this wrong. They formulate superlative and unrealistic vision statements which do not reflect in the work done by their staff and only place their vision statement is visible is walls of meeting rooms. I'd probably have another post dedicated to vision statements, but for this post lets go back to communicating vision and objectives.
It is extremely important for top leadership to adopt and evangelize the organization's vision statement. Quarterly and annual all hands and other platforms of interaction with the rest of the employees are good opportunities to communicate the vision. Other communication platforms such as email, recorded videos on intranet website, brown bags are also very helpful and should be used skilfully.
An important aspect is consistently adopting the vision statement in their own work life. Nothing is more impressive than a leader who lives by the vision statement and nothing can drive home a point better than narrating an anecdote which exemplifies adoption of vision statement. We as humans would have more profound experience if our leader went the extra mile or took some pains to live by vision statement as compared to when someone in a suit talked about exceeding customer expectations by building high quality products.
Another extremely important platform for communicating the vision is new hire trainings. It is strategically important for employees to understand the vision right from the beginning. Deep understanding of guiding principles and vision should be built right from the start. Building this understanding should start from induction program itself. This becomes very critical for organizations that are growing rapidly. If you induct a lot of employees who do not understand organization's vision, you would end up spending a lot of time and effort cleaning up the mess created by culturally confused and unaligned work force.
Equally relevant is aligned leadership team - at all levels. Every leader in the organization should exemplify and evangelize the vision. This is at least as important if not more than communication from top leaders. Why? I'm glad you asked.
Employees spend far more time working with these leaders. They probably get to see/hear from top level management only once a quarter but they talk to their supervisors and managers every day. The way their managers perform their duties has most profound impact on the work style employees will adopt. In fact it would be great to have adoption of vision in work as a promotion and performance evaluation criteria for all managers. All manager should work to reinforce the organization's vision.
Lastly, further reinforcement should be done at grass root level by recognizing exemplary work done in alignment to the vision. If lack of alignment to the vision is demonstrated, it should be dealt with immediately and corrected as necessary. Too often I notice that this recognition and correction is left out for want of time/budget or deferred till performance review cycle. Do not defer it. What we do becomes our style and habit and habits are hard to break.
All employees should feel personally responsible for realizing the vision and at the same time understand that alignment to the vision is not optional. If this message is successfully imbibed by all, you'd have a very powerful organization moving with great speed in its predetermined direction.
