What happens when there is misalignment within an organization?
Consequences:
➡Teams lack a shared understanding of what problems to solve and for whom.
- It leads to confusion. Each team is building and charting its course in isolation.
- Without each team understanding the specific customer problem they are to solve, efforts will fall short of delivering the desired outcomes.
➡Teams lack a common understanding of the outcomes.
- They aren't clear on the impact they want to achieve, which leads to a fragmented approach to problem-solving.
- They risk wasting valuable resources on addressing symptoms instead of root causes.
- It results in solutions that fail to deliver customer or business value, leaving organizations stuck with persistent challenges despite their best intentions.
➡Teams are lost in implementation details.
- They are losing their focus on solving the customer problem and achieving the desired customer and business outcomes.
- They forget the customer problem and are solely solution-focused.
- It leads to a failure to experiment, innovate, and gather evidence to learn what works. Teams may also become siloed, which further constrains their ability to achieve the desired outcomes.
➡Teams move slower.
- Progress slows to a crawl because the teams have competing priorities.
- They are juggling projects, building whatever Stakeholders/Leaders request versus zeroing in on solving a customer problem.
- If they build out a solution before reducing risk and learning if it solves the problem, they will likely fail and need to start again. There is also no view into possible dependencies with other teams that might exist.
➡Teams risk building the wrong things.
- The repercussions of misalignment extend beyond mere inefficiency; they pose a tangible risk to organizational success.
- With divergent paths and conflicting priorities, teams may inadvertently work at cross-purposes or build the wrong solutions entirely.
➡Teams risk duplicating efforts with other teams.
- Redundancy, another consequence of misalignment, squanders resources and undermines the collective effort, eroding trust and cohesion within the organization.
Take a moment to revisit the organization's vision and strategy. Does the strategy inform what customer problems to solve?
Do conflicting priorities exist and misalignment pulling resources in different directions, leaving the organization scrambling to keep pace with the ever-changing landscape and teams duplicating efforts?
Leaders must create alignment teams by clarifying priorities and fostering communication.
Empower teams to focus on core missions to solve crucial customer problems with defined metrics that allow them to track progress toward achieving customer and business outcomes.
This ongoing journey towards alignment is vital for organizational success.
Written by: Pam Krengel