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Goal Alignment and Execution

Linking the priorities of individuals and of cross-functional groups to your company's strategic goals and customer requirements.

Goal Alignment & Execution: Can you make it work?

With guidance, assistance, and a few simple principles from JILOA, you can make it work wonders.

  • Use simple and precise tools to structure planning.
  • Create a clear, concise definition of specific, measurable and attainable goals. (It is most effective when expressed as a benefit to the customer.) Be realistic and limit the scope to what you can act on, and identify "major milestones" to progress.
  • Integrate defined metrics into the process, so you can really quantify the results.
  • Promote very clear cross-functional communication, teaming, and information sharing so no operational unit operates in a vacuum. Communication will keep teams and individuals focused on goals key company goals (the "company imperatives").
  • Keep the vital work (that which furthers company goals and customer needs) in the forefront and the trivial behind to keep your goals alive throughout the year.
  • Schedule periodic assessment and evaluation to foster accountability, and to allow people to safely communicate problems or obstacles encountered so they get needed assistance.
  • Make reporting concise and focused on critical issues; eliminate time spent where it isn't needed.
  • Where necessary, re-align and adjust the goals throughout the process.
  • Recognize and reward individual contribution to strategic company goals.

Imagine how much easier it would be to achieve your company's key goals if every functional department, every team, and every individual within your organization were pulling in the same direction, all aiming for and supporting those same key goals?

Too often, because top leaders are by nature strong-willed, competitive, and fiercely independent, senior executives may see their priorities differently and set their goals in a vacuum. Working in different directions can create friction between the various operational groups.

Too much friction and you start to feel the heat. Everything slows down; everything is harder. Commitments fall through, deadlines are missed, products are late to market, employees are frustrated, and customers complain.

At this point, your teams will function in a reactionary, rather than strategic, mode and the entire process of goal-setting becomes meaningless.

Organizational alignment has to start at the top. Cross-functional leaders must work together to identify the goals most critical to your organization's success. Focused on a shared set of values, they can then align the company resources toward the common goals, and communicate those goals (the "company imperatives") to the people at all levels who help build your organization.

Every team member needs (and wants) a clear vision of the greater business goals; they need to know how their own job and personal success tie in to achieving them. When personal development goals are properly aligned to strategic objectives and metrics, individual success is linked to the success of your company.

Goal Alignment will help achieve your primary goals – and more. It also results in:

  • focused and motivated management and employees
  • it creates a “peer-team” environment in which cross-functional conflict becomes cross-functional cooperation
  • it allows for open communication about obstacles and the need for assistance to overcome them.

Best of all, it means you can spend less time on management and supervision; and more time on strategic planning and innovation.

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