3 Signs That Point To Your Business Being Aligned

Alignment in your business is about focus.  It’s about a collective working together for a common goal and having the ability to overcome the obstacles that come up along the way.  Alignment can be difficult to achieve but when you have it, your business thrives.

Alignment is about aligning the work that your business does with the vision for where the business needs to go.  A common theme that you will see about alignment is that it takes a high level of commitment to communication to achieve.  This is, quite frankly, a commitment that a lot of business owners are unwilling to make.  But not you.

How do you know if your business is aligned and focused?  There are 3 specific areas that will provide the evidence.

Your vision is the first way.  We call this the core of your business.  When you have effectively communicated your vision, and by effective I mean that you have shared it with your team over and over again and you live it yourself, you will see this show up in your business when your team is also living that vision and working according to the vision and values that you have set forth.  If your team is not living your vision and values then it’s because they aren’t clear on what that is.  If they aren’t clear on what the vision is, they will never be able to do the critical work on their own.  You will always be harping on them to do it.

Key point on vision:  Keep some consistency with your vision.  If you are constantly changing it then it gets too confusing.

The second way to tell if you are team is aligned is that they are focused on the objectives of your business and are consistently engaged in the work that goes with those objectives.  The first step here is to actually have objectives.  Assuming you have them then it’s important to line those objectives up with the work that your team does best.  An aligned team knows the objectives of an organization and where they fit into those objectives.

Key point on objectives: Use your overall objectives to create performance standards for your team.  This ties the company goals to the individual. 

The last way to know that your business is aligned and focused is through the eyes of your customers.  This shows up in the experience that is delivered to your end users/customers/patients/members, etc. When your team is aligned they deliver the right experience at the right time with each of your clients.  They also make the right decisions to service these clients and make sure their needs are being met in a way that is consistent with the culture of the business.

Key point on delivered customer experience:  One of the best modern day examples of this comes from Zappos.  Their team is absolutely aligned with their values and act accordingly. 

Focused action is powerful. It was put eloquently in the book Linchpin from a piece by Ishita Gupta. She says: “Choose to be laser beam, with focused intention, or a scattered ray of light that doesn’t do any good.”  Choose to align your team with the vision and actions of your business and be a laser beam for your customers.