How often do you hear about the importance of purpose, vision and strategy in business?
Probably a lot. And, since familiarity can breed contempt, it’s tempting to write them off as little more than business buzzwords.
However, one concept quietly sits at the intersection of these ideas and is crucial for long-term success: “strategic alignment”.
In fact, achieving strategic alignment can often be the difference between a thriving business and one that struggles to move forward despite everyone’s best efforts.
So, what exactly is strategic alignment? How can you achieve it in your business? And what are the tangible benefits in getting it right?
Read on for answers to these questions and more.
What is strategic alignment?
Strategic alignment is about ensuring that all aspects of your business work harmoniously toward a common goal. Using an orchestra as a helpful metaphor, the conductor (CEO and/or leadership team) sets the tempo and direction while each section (functional areas, teams, employees) plays its part in sync. If even one section is off-beat, the music becomes disjointed and ineffective.
When a business is strategically aligned, every decision, action and initiative serves the larger purpose and vision. This increases the likelihood that every part of the business will move in the same direction.
How to achieve a state of strategic alignment
Strategic alignment doesn't just happen. You need to be deliberate and driven about it. Here's some ideas on how to make it happen:
Start with purpose and vision
Strategic alignment starts with a clear understanding of your purpose (the reason your business exists beyond the pursuit of revenue and profit) and vision (a clear picture of what you want your business to look like at a point in future). Without that, alignment is impossible because there’s no clear and shared goal to actually align with.
To ensure these are crystal clear:
Define and articulate your purpose: be explicit about why your business was founded. What motivates you, your leaders and your employees to deliver value to clients?
Create a vision statement for the business: this should paint a clear picture of where you want the business to be at a point in the future. You can (and should) dream big, but make sure your vision is also achievable and within your capabilities (both current and prospective).
Communicate constantly and consistently: share your purpose and vision across your business. This will help employees understand how their day-to-day roles contribute to the larger purpose and where the business is headed. Do this frequently and use multiple communication channels. It’s about making your purpose and vision part of your business DNA.
Set strategic objectives
Once you’re satisfied that your purpose and vision are clear, the next step is to break them down into tangible, strategic objectives. These should be specific, measurable objectives to keep you moving toward achieving your vision.
Break these down into short—and long-term time frames. Short-term objectives provide quick wins that help keep people motivated. In contrast, long-term objectives help create the bigger-picture understanding that's essential if everyone is to head toward the same destination.
It's also important to align these objectives across the different functional areas in your business. While they’ll each rightly have their own priorities, strategic alignment requires that every team’s objectives contribute to your vision. Sales, marketing, operations, and HR should all row in the same direction.
Align "sub-strategies" across the business
This is a critical point.
For true strategic alignment, “sub-strategies” (for example, those that apply in HR, branding, marketing, IT and others) must be aligned with the overall business strategy. This is how a whole-of-business approach is achieved, helping to ensure that no part of the business is moving in a direction contrary to its overarching objectives.
Here are some examples of what we mean:
HR strategy alignment: HR strategy clearly provides the foundations for hiring and developing the right people to contribute to your business success. Performance metrics, training and development programs, and employee engagement efforts should all reflect and support the broader strategic objectives.
Branding and marketing strategy alignment: branding and marketing efforts need to reflect the higher-level strategy of the business as driven by purpose and vision. Misalignment in these areas (for example, using low-cost messaging for a luxury product) can confuse clients and dilute your brand’s value. Consistent messaging, tone, and client experience across all touchpoints is key to maintaining strategic alignment.
IT strategy alignment: these days, technology is often the backbone of a business, and an aligned IT strategy ensures that systems and solutions support overall strategic business objectives. Alignment here also involves ensuring that tech decisions support business scalability, effectiveness and efficiency.
By aligning sub-strategies across the entire business, you create a coherent, focused environment. Everyone’s actions reinforce the overall business objectives, creating a powerful and unified front.
Foster cross-functional collaboration
By now, it should be clear that strategic alignment isn’t just about setting objectives; it’s about ensuring that different parts of your business work together effectively toward shared outcomes. Collaboration helps teams stay aligned with the overall strategy because it facilitates communication and course correction where needed.
It’s not easy to break down silos (or prevent them from appearing in the first place), but doing so promotes information sharing and helps ensure that all parts of the business are aligned with the overall strategy.
Leadership and culture
Leadership has a critical role in all of this (not surprisingly) in taking responsibility for actively driving efforts to create strategic alignment. Leaders ought to communicate purpose and vision clearly and with conviction and model appropriate behaviours.
When leaders demonstrate the right values and show commitment to purpose and vision, employees are more likely to echo that behaviour.
It’s also important to build and maintain the right culture. The starting point for this is in hiring decisions. You need to bring on board employees who buy into and will support your purpose and foster a culture that rewards alignment with your objectives.
That said, don't assume that simply hiring the "right" people results in "job done". Even your best employees will quickly lose their way if they perceive leadership isn't fully invested in what the business is trying to achieve.
Benefits of strategic alignment
You’re probably thinking right about now that the process of achieving strategic alignment sounds like a lot of work.
And you’d be right. But the effort is well worth it because there are several benefits.
Let’s take a look:
Improved business effectiveness
Strategic alignment helps you allocate your valuable, finite resources more effectively than might otherwise be the case. As a simple example, your employees can better understand how their work contributes to what the business aims to achieve, which reduces wasted time and effort. Physical assets can also be deployed in the most effective way when their internal custodians are driven by shared objectives.
When everyone knows what they’re working toward, it's a great environment for more effective collaboration and innovation.
Better decision-making
When driven by your purpose and vision, strategic alignment serves as a decision-making framework. When faced with choices (which, of course, happens constantly), employees and leaders can more readily assess which of the paths available to them is most likely to contribute to the achievement of business objectives. This helps filter out distractions and keeps the business focused on what really matters.
Increased employee engagement
Research tells us that most employees want to understand how their efforts contribute to the overall objectives of the business. And that when they have that visibility, they’re more likely to be motivated and engaged. Purpose-driven work is inherently more fulfilling, and a clear vision gives employees a sense of ownership and pride in their contributions. The result is greater engagement and productivity.
Enhanced client satisfaction
Strategically aligned businesses are in a position to provide a client experience that stands out in their market. That’s because every part of the business better understands the client value that the business is focused on delivering and is well positioned to work together to deliver that value.
Sustainable growth
At GrowthCatalyst, we’re firm believers that every business should pursue sustainable growth – growth that’s reasonably consistent, predictable and repeatable. Maintaining strategic alignment helps a business do this. Instead of chasing short-term gains that deviate from their core purpose, aligned businesses focus on long-term success. They’re better able to adapt to changes in the market and are more resilient in the face of challenges.
The pitfalls of misalignment
Businesses that lack strategic alignment often struggle with inefficiency, employee disengagement, and poor decision-making – pretty much the flipside of everything we discussed above. Here’s what we mean
Conflicting priorities
Without strategic alignment, functional areas in the business may have conflicting priorities. For example, salespeople might be focused on short-term revenue growth, while product/services might be focused on long-term innovation. This development act creates friction and can slow progress for the entire business.
Employee burnout
Employees in misaligned businesses show a tendency to feel disconnected from its underlying purpose. They may work hard but feel their efforts go unnoticed or aren’t contributing to the greater good. This is a perfect recipe for burnout, high turnover, and disengagement.
Missed opportunities
In businesses lacking alignment, opportunities are more likely to be overlooked (or, worse, ignored) because putting out fires takes most of the focus. Instead of proactively seeking new markets or working on innovations, these businesses spend their time dealing with internal miscommunication and inefficiencies.
That's a lot
It is.
But it's worth the effort.
It’s important to recognise that strategic alignment isn’t a one-off task; it’s an ongoing process that requires attention and adjustment as your business grows and evolves. It’s critical because it helps ensure that everyone is working toward the same objectives and that your business remains resilient in the face of challenges.
It’s a little like GPS navigation. It doesn’t just give you a destination and a route; it recalibrates as you go, helping you avoid dead ends and other obstacles that might get in the way of you getting where you want to go.
How strategically aligned is your business?
Do functional areas collaborate effectively?
Are they working toward shared objectives?
A conversation with a GrowthCatalyst adviser could be just what you need to give your vision and plans the best possible chance of being realised. We can help you build long-term, sustainable and profitable business growth.
Contact us to arrange a face-to-face or virtual conversation.
Alternatively, you can book a time for an initial discussion here.
In other news...
GrowthCatalyst has joined forces with several like-minded professionals to form the advisory group Konektis (check us out here). Collectively, the Konektis team provides integrated, multi-disciplinary advice to SMEs to deliver a "one strategy" outcome.
Take the Konektis Pulse Check and receive immediate, actionable ideas to grow your business.
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