In our first post, \u201cStrategy and Leadership Alignment: Why a Good Strategy Goes Wrong<\/a>,\u201d we shared common pain points we often hear from clients expressing how different interpretations of their strategy result in misalignment in leadership. Below are some examples. Do any of these resonate with what you see, hear, or feel in your organization?<\/strong><\/p>\n If any of these resonated, the good news is you are not alone. Clients in banking, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, software, and more struggle with misalignment across leaders.<\/p>\n When solving execution challenges, we often find the elephant in the room is an unintentional chasm between organizational silos, especially IT and their business partners.<\/strong> What is the root cause of this problem? They do not speak a common language.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s explore why.<\/p>\n First, as humans, we have different communication styles, as we shared in our second post, \u201cStrategy and Leadership Alignment: Choose Your Words Carefully<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Second, leaders know different parts of the business. IT knows the power of their technology platforms, and the business knows the innovation needed to delight their external and internal customers. They develop and use terms differently from their functional lens.<\/p>\n An MIT Sloan analysis<\/a> of 124 organizations revealed that only 28 percent of executives and middle managers responsible for executing strategy could list three of their company\u2019s strategic priorities.<\/strong><\/p>\n There are five key steps you can follow to create a common language in your organization. These work for any communication chasms across the company<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bring leaders together to describe how they believe internal and external customers will experience their future state.<\/strong> The key? They must use sixth-grade-level language describing what customers will see, feel, think, or do differently in the future so everyone has a common understanding.<\/p>\n Understand and document your value streams and the capabilities that enable them to create a common language about the work you do as a company across your leaders and teams.<\/p>\n Ensure your prioritization is not only bottom-up or top-down but creates visibility across the organization with clearly identified dependencies and sequencing. Strategy execution<\/a> breaks down when departments depend on common capabilities to be successful.<\/strong> You must bust through silos to empower decision makers and ensure progress.<\/p>\n\n
Determine the Break in Leadership Alignment<\/h2>\n
5 Steps to Create Alignment in Leadership<\/h2>\n
1. Describe desired customer outcomes simply.<\/h3>\n
2. Define what the company does and the value it delivers in common terms.<\/h3>\n
3. Prioritize together.<\/h3>\n
4. Support mindset shifts.<\/h3>\n