Front-end alignment: are you going where you’re steering;
or are you steering where you don’t want to go?
I recently brought my car in for an alignment. Alignments are important because they help to keep your vehicle going where you steer it. Proper alignment also allows the tires to wear evenly, which helps traction, braking, and overall tire life/safety. Correctly aligned cars protect the ball joints, which insure that the steering and suspension work properly. All of this keeps the car, and you, “on track.”
It occurred to me that some businesses get out of alignment and off track. Then they suffer a decline in performance (productivity, efficiency, sales, service, customer/client acquisition). So it is as necessary to get a front-end alignment for your business as it is for your car.
A natural question to ask at this point is, “What is business alignment?” Let’s examine it.
Connecting the dots
Connecting the dots has become a common metaphor for finding logical functional linkages within a business organization. Alignment is about identifying the dots and defining how they relate to one another. Some of the big and important dots are Mission, Purpose, Marketing, Sales, and Profit. Expressed another way, these Big 5 can be identified as Values (Mission/Purpose/Profit); Beliefs (Marketing); and Actions (Sales). To be in proper alignment, a company’s Values, Beliefs, and Actions must be consistent with each other, reflect each other, and harmonize with each other.
Some simple examples
Companies spend a lot of time and money to develop and promote a slogan. So let’s take a well known slogan and use it as an exemplar of alignment. “Have it your way at Burger King.” This slogan has at least two motivations: 1) to position Burger King against MacDonald’s, where you pretty much take the sandwich the way MacD’s makes it; and 2), it signifies a company cultural belief that customer choice is important.
Now, what if you walked into a BK and ordered something your way, and the server rolled his/her eyes and announced that you couldn’t have the sandwich that way? You would feel disappointed, offended and hoodwinked because the pronounced corporate value was not lived out in the actions/behavior of the server. In this hypothetical, Burger King could lose the sale and would probably lose a customer.
3M Corporation of Minnesota has long enjoyed a reputation as a company that delivers “Innovative Technology for a changing world” (their tagline). 3M’s culture encourages experimentation and “fast failure” (try things, if they fail, decide that quickly , and move on). Suppose you’re a 3M chemist, and your performance reviews are suffering because you spend a lot of lab time “tinkering” with things that do not consistently turn in to products. Would you be feeling a misalignment between the on-paper value of experimentation and your written performance review? Probably so. The walk doesn’t match the talk.
A practical and personal application
You get the point. As the fourth quarter winds down, many business people are working on 2010 business plans. If you haven’t started planning, get started now by checking your front end alignment. Do this simple exercise, and respond to the following questions:
- What is the purpose of my business (values)? Is it the same purpose I had when I started the business? If not, when and why did it change?
- What business principles (beliefs) do I hold that led me to my business purpose? (Spend some serious time with this. Be very honest with yourself).
- Think about how you conduct your business (actions/behaviors). What are you actually doing that communicates to your customers what you value and believe in?
Write these responses down. Having to write them helps you think more clearly and completely. Writing them objectifies them—gets them out of the vague thought stream in your head and transforms them into valid “data points” you can assess and make rational decisions around.
Once written, look for inconsistencies. If any one of the elements is not aligned with the other two, you’re off course. Even if you’re turning a profit, misalignment takes a toll on you. And the more you wear down—just like your tires—you eventually break down.
So begin your 2010 planning by checking and correcting your basic alignment. When your business values, beliefs, and actions connect, you can better steer in the direction you know you want to go in.
Want some help with this process? Schedule a free Business Alignment coaching session
