A CEO’s Frustration with Alignment and Performance

I was speaking with a client the other day who was expressing frustration with being able to align his organization with the company’s strategies, vision, mission, values and tactics. He felt as if the yearly off site meetings and quarterly communications to employees weren’t causing the company to build a culture and performance mindset around those. He mused that there must be a better way to accelerate behaviors in the organization and create a culture of strategic execution. As we spoke further, we talked about the need for:

• Clear and concise strategies, mission, values and tactics
• Constant communications to all levels of the organization
• Measures that are cascaded down to each level that support the strategic initiatives
• Accountability for all managers and employees
• Full transparency in the company
• The ability to have communications both up and down about what is working and what isn’t
• An understanding of the company’s strategic and operating gaps

We agreed that a significant shift in culture and performance was a difficult objective. We also agreed during our conversation that cultural change isn’t achieved by yearly reviews and occasional communications. The tactics to implement such a change need to be well thought through and executed with rigor. It is one of the single most important set of activities for the company’s leaders and needed to be a daily activity. He would have benefitted from a change management framework such as Group50’s Business Hierarchy of Needs® to guide his organization’s strategic planning, change management and implementation efforts. As we talked further, we agreed to keep a dialogue going and focus on strategic alignment and performance management as part of our on-going work with his organization. Several articles with further information on this topic include:

• Performance Management as a Business Strategy
• Organizational Alignment: The Good and Bad News
• Cascade
• Morphing Evaluations Into Strategic Execution

About the author: Jim Gitney is the CEO of Group50^® and specializes in the development and implementation of manufacturing and supply chain strategies. Jim and the Group50 team are all former executives with well-known manufacturing and distribution companies who understand what it takes to put together and manage the implementation of a successful strategic plan. Group50 has designed a series of strategic assessments, workshops and strategic execution tools that eliminate the existence of Anti-Strategy. You can reach us at +1 (626) 644-9746 or send a note to info@group50.com.