Aligning Your Business

In today’s tough economic climate, it is even more important the work we do is aligned with the company’s goals and priorities.

As companies reduce headcount while still driving towards revenue growth, decisions have to be made about what are the top priorities for the company.  If you cannot strongly link your work to one of the company’s priorities then you should really question yourself and/or your manager about the validity of finishing that work.

Everyone in the company should know the priorities and should be asked to understand how their work is linked to achieving success on the priorities.

One good way to do this, is through strategy deployment.  This is process by which the priorities of the company are used to determine the priorities of the division and then those are tied to projects and/or initiatives for the current year.

In a good strategy deployment process, catchball is used to get input from the layer of management below.  This helps drive accountability and alignment throughout the organization.

If you cannot link your work to one of the projects/initiatives that is part of the strategy then you have to ask if it needs to be done.  Sometimes the answer may be ‘yes’.  An example might be updating your servers or you won’t be able to run some of your IT systems.  This may not be one of the priorities but it must be done in order to keep the business running.

It is good to capture the linkages on an A3 document and use that as your guide throughout the year.

It is amazing the power of alignment has on driving a company to achieving its top priorities.  Are you aligned?

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