“80% of senior leaders believe their Company delivers superior customer service while only 8% of their customers agreed.”-- Bain and Company.
“65% of employees are somewhat or totally dissatisfied.”-- Mercer survey reported in Forbes Magazine
“84% of employees were searching for a new job in 2012 compared to 60% in 2010”-- Right Management survey.
“90% of the time people judge a company on the experience they or someone else has and 10% on the sales or marketing message. An unhappy employee can’t create an engaged customer.”-- Brand Integrity
Company alignment is essential for success
There are many reasons to develop and implement an effective process to align employees with a company’s key goals and initiatives. Let’s focus on those with greatest impact. Company alignment is important because it:
- Improves operational performance and strategy execution
- Increases employee morale and retention
- Creates engaged employees--the best strategy to improve the bottom line
- Gives a company its best chance to succeed-- Companies aligned with a strategic plan outperform those that are not
Building a high performing company requires 1% vision and 99% alignment. Creating alignment may be your most important priority. A company’s productivity and profitability can be directly traced to the performance of its employees working to achieve individual goals aligned to support key initiatives and broader company goals. Developing and implementing an effective process to create and maintain employee alignment is a great challenge.
Building alignment should be a simple, transparent process. It can be enhanced by an “agile” planning process. The following tools facilitate this process:
- A quarterly alignment (Likert) survey
- A strategic dashboard focused on a few key metrics that matter
- A 1-2 page strategic plan and an “agile” planning process
Quarterly Alignment (Likert) Survey
In an Inc. Magazine survey of 3000 senior executives 92% of CEOs said their leadership teams could clearly communicate the firm’s strategic priorities. However, it also reported that in fact only 2% of their leadership teams actually could do so. Similarly, 85% of CEO’s thought their leadership teams could clearly state the company’s customer value propositions but the survey indicated only 7% could.
It is critical to identify blind spots and keep key people aligned with a company’s core values and strategy. A quarterly alignment (Likert) survey will enable CEOs to identify and address blind spots necessary to facilitate leadership teams and employee alignment.
Strategic Dashboard (Metrics That Matter)
Every organization has a few key metrics that matter. Financial metrics, important as they are, primarily look backwards (e.g. actual versus budget). Your company also needs to focus on metrics that peer into the future and look around corners.
Peter Drucker famously stated: “the purpose of business is to create (and retain) customers. As such, a business has two primary functions: marketing and innovation.” To Drucker, marketing focuses on customer creation (revenue generating), while innovation addresses the need to deliver goods and services efficiently (cost reducing).
Each organization needs to identify metrics that provide early warning indicators of internal or external factors that can cause employee or market misalignment. Which metrics should your company hold itself accountable to achieve? Here are some suggestive examples:
In the next article in this series I will discuss the role of two other drivers of employee engagement: a strategic plan and an “agile” planning process. If your company is currently looking to implement strategies for growth, have a look at our ebook below on the 3 Step Strategy to Improve Your Profitability.
About the Author
Laurence is an experienced CEO and Board member in the technology and services industries. He has experience leading startups, IPOs, management buy outs and turnarounds in both private and public companies with worldwide operations. He has deep expertise in development and marketing of software, hardware and integrated systems in sectors including aerospace/defense/intelligence, software, semiconductor, manufacturing, energy services and publishing. Learn more about Laurence or contact him here.
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