*These results have been achieved with business units and teams in Pharmaceuticals, High Tech, Financial Services and other sectors.
When everybody pulls together amazing things can happen, but with so many competing projects and priorities, alignment is hard to measure and easily lost.
In an era of change and innovation, alignment and collaboration are hot topics. Moreover, the potential for re-alignment is one of the greatest opportunities and challenges facing any leader.
Boosting your team’s alignment – what impact could it have?
Today’s complex business challenges require working across traditional functional boundaries. That is not easy however and it puts a new urgency around alignment.
Launching new products, embracing new technologies or complying with new regulations – none of these opportunities or challenges can be met by siloed initiatives or solo-runs. A shared compelling purpose is key.
How important is cross-functional collaboration to your success?
The Alignment Challenge: Boost alignment by up to 23% in 24 weeks. Ready? Please talk to us
Starting out perfectly aligned gives an organization a real head start. But, in a fast-moving environment things inevitably change, with priorities and focus shifting as a result.
If you are out of alignment by just a few degrees today, you could find yourself far off-course by year end. As alignment slips over time it needs to be continually measured and adjusted to reflect changes inside and outside the organization.
How has your team’s alignment shifted over the past two quarters?
CLIENT STORIES – Can you relate to the challenges faced by these organizations?
Cross-functional Alignment
Pulling Together to Deliver the Strategic Agenda
Delivering the strategic agenda – a selection of key strategic projects and priorities – would depend on all departments and teams pulling together. But for an organization traditionally organized along rigid functional lines, cross-functional collaboration wouldn’t be easy.
Cross-functional Collaboration
The shift from hierarchy to a network of teams
The organization had become a network of teams, with most leaders (63%) participating on two or more committees or teams. The transition from hierarchy to matrix promised greater speed and agility, but it had a surprising hidden cost.
Alignment of Purpose:
The Team with a 68% ‘Compelling’ Purpose
“I am blue in the face communicating the strategy” said the CEO in a frustrated tone. “Surely everybody knows it by now!?!” he added with a look of disbelief. The data had just revealed otherwise – the score for “clear and compelling purpose” was a disappointing 68%.
Boost alignment by up to 21% over a period of 24 weeks. Here is how it works:
Measure: Identify any misalignment and pin-point its causes with predictive data. This includes the analysis and costing of teaming and cross-functional collaboration.
Re-Align: Your people work to clarify Purpose, Priorities and Results (in powerful pitstops (physical and virtual)s) making any trade-offs required for successful alignment.
Act: Your team(s) will be engaged taking action to tackle obstacles and deliver measurable performance gains.
Adjust: Progress and momentum will be checked via periodic adjustment updates involving your team.
Re-Measure: Alignment is re-measured using predictive analytics, with progress reviewed by your team, together with any lessons learned & adjustments required.
The Alignment Challenge: Test and re-align over 24 weeks. Ready? Please talk to us
Find New Inspiration
The choreographed precision of a pit team sets a new standard for teamwork and cross functional collaboration. Indeed, the sports research into team performance started decades before the business universities.
Find new inspiration for alignment in our latest book Pitstop to Perform™™.
Explore the Research
Will being in alignment help your leaders and their teams to win? If not people will struggle to put the interests of their organization and team out front.
Our research points to the importance of defining and re-defining winning in a way that connects with deep personal motivations. This is alignment at its most powerful.
Did you know that our industry-leading analytics platform, called Pitstop Analytics, measures all of these things:
