In his book, “True Alignment,” author Edgar Papke makes the point that in genuinely great organizations, everyone . . . every executive, every manager, every employee . . . pulls together toward the same goal, the same outcome. Makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, without this sort of “alignment,” members of an organization can work at cross purposes to one another causing dysfunction, confusion, and inefficiencies. Yet in too many cases, if you ask a random sampling of an organization’s members, “What’s our goal this year?,” you’ll get inconsistent answers, or maybe even radically different answers. So how can we possibly pull together as a team if we all have different ideas about where we’re trying to go? For more on this and some thoughts for how you get your organization “aligned,” please read below.
“Extraordinary companies and teams are those in which the what, why, and how are aligned.” – Edgar Papke
According to Papke, high-performing organizations are aligned along three distinct but intertwined tracks. They have great clarity about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it. Take a look at each of these tracks separately.
What. You’d think at a minimum, everyone would know what we do around here, wouldn’t you? But that’s not necessarily true. Oh, everyone can probably tell you what product or service we provide in a very basic, superficial way, but can they tell us what outcomes our product or service provides? It’s the old story about drills. Nobody really wants a drill, they just want what a drill can do for them . . . make perfectly round holes. Nobody wants a sump pump, they just want a dry basement. Nobody wants life insurance, they just want the peace of mind it gives them. In fact, nobody cares about the product or service any of us provide. They only care about what our product or service can do for them. So if you want your organization aligned on the “what” track, get everyone focused on the outcome(s) you provide. Are we just making funny little rods of twisted steel here, or are we helping people make perfectly round holes?
Why. Why do we do what we do? The answer to that question needs to stir some emotion, to give the organization a shared sense of purpose and mission. Let’s imagine we’re assembling child car seats. Why are we doing that? To make money, of course, but that doesn’t really trip our emotional triggers. What if we’re doing it to make cars safe for our kids? Now that’s something that touches us and gives us that shared sense of mission and purpose. Clearly, it’s easier for some businesses than others to answer the “why” question in a way that elicits an emotional response, but it can be done. Remember, people need a paycheck, but they also want to be involved in something that’s important and has substance . . . something they can be proud to be a part of.
How. Obviously, it’s important to know the operational details of how we deliver our products or services. But that’s not the “how” we’re talking about here. This is more about culture and values . . . the rules we impose upon ourselves that tell us how we will relate to our customers, and how we will relate to one another. How do we communicate effectively with one another? How do we decide what behaviors we tolerate and what behaviors we do not? How will we honor our responsibilities to each other?
We’re all in business to serve the needs of our customer. In many cases, we’re in business, not only to serve the needs of our customer, but the needs of our customer’s customer as well. Therefore, to be in alignment:
– what we do;
– why we do what we do; and
– how we do what we do
must all align with those customer needs. However, such alignment can’t happen unless everyone in the organization has a uniform understanding of the what, why, and how. So good communication and leadership are key here. We need to communicate our what, why, and how clearly, concisely, and frequently, and then as leaders, we need to be living, breathing examples of alignment.
