How to evaluate your company’s strategic alignment?

As most entrepreneurs would attest, aligning towards a common goal is vital for any business. Countless hours are devoted to deliberating over the business strategy, but the question remains:

Is everyone truly on the same page ?

On going research cited in this Harvard Business Review article reveals that strategic misalignment is a common occurrence. The bigger problem is also the fact that teams are often unaware of their misalignment. In this study, over 500 employees, middle managers, and senior executives from 12 organizations were surveyed about their company’s alignment with corporate strategy.

According to the data:

A significant 82% of respondents expressed feeling a sense of strategic alignment within their respective organizations.

However, when their written explanations were analyzed, it was found that:

Actual alignment was on average just 23% – a significant difference from the perceived alignment.

It takes a considerable amount of effort to ensure that everyone is working towards the same objective. Simply announcing a new strategy and assuming it reaches the rest of the organization is not enough, as stated by the HBR article.

How can I determine the strategic alignment of my business?

If you’re an entrepreneur wondering where to start, testing your company’s strategic alignment is a great first step.

At Maïeutyk, we offer a simple diagnostic that requires 10 minutes of your time and evaluates your business in the following three areas:

BX: The brand experience is what you promise

CX: Customer experience is what you deliver as a product or service

EX: Employee experience is how you get there

These three spheres represent your business’s unique characteristics that set you apart in the market. Understanding how they are interrelated enables you to create alignment and therefore develop the agility to stand out among the competition.

Additionally, identifying any gaps or areas for improvement can help you realign your strategies to better serve your business objectives.

Immediately after completing the diagnosis survey, you will receive the results. After that, the fun begins!

Where do you pinpoint your efforts?

Where do you start in order to create alignment within your business?

The next crucial step is to bring everyone else on board.

How can company-wide alignment be achieved in the long run?

It is difficult to implement a strategy effectively when there is a large gap between actual and perceived alignment within an organization. You need a team effort to ensure that everyone is on the same page and working towards a shared goal.

Common tactics to foster team alignment include:

• Making company-wide information easily accessible to avoid information silos;
• Checking in with the team regularly;
• Encouraging anonymous feedback.

However, despite these efforts and as the HBR article states, misalignment is still a common occurrence.

That’s where our approach comes in: Cocreation.

At Maieutyk, we’ve completed thousands of hours of co-creation workshops with our clients. These workshops involve employees at all levels in strategic business or marketing planning and provide a space for open and collaborative dialogue.

Our team of facilitators dig deep and ask the right questions alongside our clients.

At the end of the mandate, a thorough plan is developed for everyone to follow. The team’s involvement in the entire process ensures seamless adoption of the plan and the objectives.

In conclusion, we’ve seen it over and over again; creating an environment to seek input and feedback from all levels of the company and involving the team in the strategic planning process promotes acceptance, motivation and…alignment!

To get started and evaluate the current status of your brand experience, your customer experience, and your employee experience, take our 10-minute diagnostic survey.